Bronx River Ride Notes II (November 2011)
Click here for the route
Soundview
Park
Welcome everybody to the “Gateway to the Bronx River," Soundview Park is situated where the Bronx River opens into the East River. The Bronx River changes from a saltwater river to the only freshwater river in New York City at Westfarms, just a few miles north from here and we will visit that site and I will point it out.
This area where we stand used to be all marshland (swamp) when the city acquired the 93-acre property in 1937. Robert Moses wanted it to be called “Lafayette Park” named after Marquis de Lafayette a French general the served in the Continental army during the American Revolution. But he yielded to local residents who wanted the park name to have to do with their neighborhood. In old maps of New York the East River here was called the Long Island Sound. (They are connected.) We will hear more about Robert Moses later.
The city acquired more property for the park in the 40’s, 50’s and 60’s and the park 205 acres now.
To point out
- Hunts Point Market is the largest produce market in the world. Chances are if you are eating fresh produce it came though the Point.
- The new Fulton Fish Market is there too. Giuliani fight with mob who ran the old fish market down by the South Street Seaport. His attorney henchman Randi Mastrow played a big part. I used to tutor his daughter.
- Water is called “The Devil’s Neck” because the currents were treacherous and there were shallow waters with a lot of rocks that ships would run into and sink because of.
- Harding Park neighborhood – in the 1920’s
- Whitestone Bridge (closer)
- Throgsneck Bridge (further)
- SUNY Maritime Academy at the base of the bridge
- Laguardia Airport
- Rikers Island
- College Point Queens is on the other side of the Whitestone Bridge, then Elmhurst, then Astoria as you head south and west
- “Something that you can’t see are… Oyster beds underwater.” Oysters are an important part of a marine ecosystem because they filter the water. And they were once abundant in NYC and everybody ate them. NYC oysters were revered and exported to Europe. By the mid 1800’s though the harbor became so polluted because sewage was dumped right into the harbor untreated. So people had to stop eating the oysters. Well thanks to the Clean Water Act and much more friendly ways of sewage treatment out harbor waters have made a comeback. People kayak in the waters all the time. They even have swimming races.
We have a marine scientist Kate Boicort on our tour that specializes in harbor restoration including the plant and animal life. So if you have more questions about that stuff ask her.
This park and the surrounding shoreline used to be marshland. That is its natural state. As I mentioned this was all filled in from excavations done for highway construction in the 1930’s. Now that it about to be undone. The Parks Dept. is about to restore some of the wetlands to the park. A construction fence will go up in a few weeks.
A noteworthy person that grew up nearby in the Hunt’s Point neighborhood who you probably never heard of was Helen Kane. Helen came from modest beginnings and was the youngest of 3 kids. Her father was a German immigrant who struggled to make ends meet and her mom worked in a laundry.
When Helen was in high school she got her first role in a play starring as a queen and her mom reluctantly paid $3 for the costume. By the age of 15 she was performing in professionally first as a singer at Kanes' a major saloon in the Clason Point area (point to direction) which was owned by a relative. She went on to perform in vaudeville including a bit with the Marx Brothers. In 1928, Helen appeared in the musical "Good Boy” and sang the song "I Wanna Be Loved by You" which became famous.
The reason that Helen might seem familiar to you is because a cartoonist named Max Fleischer created the character Betty Boop 1930 with Helen as inspriation. Betty was one of the first animated sex symbols. In 1932 the animated film "Boop-Oop-a-Doop," Betty plays a hig-wire performer in the circus and is harassed by her boss and threatens her virtue. This was very daring at a time when such subject matter was considered taboo. Betty pleads with the ringmaster to cease his advances, as she sings "Don't Take My Boop-Oop-A-Doop Away." Koko the Clown is practicing his juggling outside the tent, and overhears the struggle inside. He leaps in to save Betty, struggling with the ringmaster, who loads him into a cannon and fires it. Koko, who remained hiding inside the cannon, knocks the ringmaster out cold with a mallet, and inquires about Betty's welfare, to which she answers in song, "No, he couldn't take my boop-oop-a-doop away!"
Colin Powell grew up on Kelly Street also in the Hunts Point neighborhood. A new apartment building was just built on Kelly Street that was named after him.
Wiki Helen Hayes and Betty Boop
http://www.nycgovparks.org/parks/X262/highlights/13121
Robert Moses is buried in Woodlawn cemetery
The West Bronx was annexed to New York City (then largely confined to Manhattan) in 1874, and the areas east of the Bronx River in 1895.[4] The Bronx first assumed a distinct legal identity when it became a borough of Greater New York in 1898.
Elevated railways connect to the subway system, which linked to Manhattan in 1904. The great majority lived in rented apartments. The demographic history of the Bronx in the 20th century may be divided into four periods: a boom during 1900–29, with a population growth by a factor of six from 200,000 in 1900 to 1.3 million in 1930. The Great Depression and war years saw a slowing of growth. The 1950s were hard times, as the Bronx decayed 1950–79 from a predominantly middle-class to a predominantly lower-class area with high rates of crime and poverty. Finally the Bronx has enjoyed economic and demographic stabilization since 1980.
Wiki Bronx
Harding Park
This little community of cute bungalows you see here is called Harding Park. It was named after the President at the time that the bungalows were built Warren G. Harding (29th pres) who served from 1921 – 23. (He died suddenly.) But don’t let its quaintness fool you. It was an embattled area as recently as the 1980’s and going back all the way to Native American and Dutch days.
The embattled history goes back to the 1600’s when the Dutch battled the Native Americans who lived in communities along the Bronx River for who knows how long. The tribe was known as the “Siwanoy” and spoke Algonquin. There was a 3-year period of raids back and forth between the Natives and the Dutch called the “Pig Wars.”
The current layout as you see it now dates back to the 1920’s when a real estate developer Thomas Higgs built the bungalows to rent out to summer vacationers. At the time the Clason (pronounced “Clawson”) was a resort area with beaches, dance halls and amusement parks and still plenty of swampland. There were ferries that ran everyday between here and College Point Queens across the river that brought a steady stream of visitors back and forth.
After WWII there was a shortage of housing for the returning veterans and so the bungalow tenants decided to turn them into permanent homes. The residents were mostly Irish, Scandinavian, German and Italian and made their livelihoods from the sea. Now it is mostly Hispanic and is referred to as “Little Puerto Rico.”
In 1959 Robert Moses wanted to tare down the neighborhood, what he called “The Sound View Slums.” Robert Moses tore down a lot of slums around the city and liked modern buildings and expressways. He wanted to do the same here. In fact, there was an agency called “Slum Clearance Committee” of which Moses was the head. The project was to be named “Bronxview Village.” Moses failed because he had come under scrutiny that his buddies had bought the land and would stand to make a large profit when they sold it to the city. There was bad press for Moses about this. The project was not approved by the Board of Estimates. This marked the beginning of the end of Moses. Within a year he resigned from the Slum Clearance Committee and as City Construction Coordinator.
As recently as a few years ago the neighborhood wasn’t even fully tied into the city’s sewage system. They stuff used to go right into the river. There are still unnamed streets that are not on the official city map.
In 1979, the city reclaimed the properties because the landowner didn’t pay his taxes. People owned their homes but not the land itself! They paid ground rent. In 1982 the residents banded together and made a deal with the city to buy their properties where their bungalows stood for cheap about $3,000 each.
1. Times article from 1981 about the Harding Park struggle
http://www.nytimes.com/1981/10/22/nyregion/rent-strike-on-city-land-faces-day-of-reckoning.html
2. Page 300 “Robert Moses and the Modern City” Ballon and Jackson
3. http://www.nytimes.com/1996/12/31/nyregion/hispanic-settlers-transform-harding-park-in-bronx.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm
Welcome everybody to the “Gateway to the Bronx River," Soundview Park is situated where the Bronx River opens into the East River. The Bronx River changes from a saltwater river to the only freshwater river in New York City at Westfarms, just a few miles north from here and we will visit that site and I will point it out.
This area where we stand used to be all marshland (swamp) when the city acquired the 93-acre property in 1937. Robert Moses wanted it to be called “Lafayette Park” named after Marquis de Lafayette a French general the served in the Continental army during the American Revolution. But he yielded to local residents who wanted the park name to have to do with their neighborhood. In old maps of New York the East River here was called the Long Island Sound. (They are connected.) We will hear more about Robert Moses later.
The city acquired more property for the park in the 40’s, 50’s and 60’s and the park 205 acres now.
To point out
- Hunts Point Market is the largest produce market in the world. Chances are if you are eating fresh produce it came though the Point.
- The new Fulton Fish Market is there too. Giuliani fight with mob who ran the old fish market down by the South Street Seaport. His attorney henchman Randi Mastrow played a big part. I used to tutor his daughter.
- Water is called “The Devil’s Neck” because the currents were treacherous and there were shallow waters with a lot of rocks that ships would run into and sink because of.
- Harding Park neighborhood – in the 1920’s
- Whitestone Bridge (closer)
- Throgsneck Bridge (further)
- SUNY Maritime Academy at the base of the bridge
- Laguardia Airport
- Rikers Island
- College Point Queens is on the other side of the Whitestone Bridge, then Elmhurst, then Astoria as you head south and west
- “Something that you can’t see are… Oyster beds underwater.” Oysters are an important part of a marine ecosystem because they filter the water. And they were once abundant in NYC and everybody ate them. NYC oysters were revered and exported to Europe. By the mid 1800’s though the harbor became so polluted because sewage was dumped right into the harbor untreated. So people had to stop eating the oysters. Well thanks to the Clean Water Act and much more friendly ways of sewage treatment out harbor waters have made a comeback. People kayak in the waters all the time. They even have swimming races.
We have a marine scientist Kate Boicort on our tour that specializes in harbor restoration including the plant and animal life. So if you have more questions about that stuff ask her.
This park and the surrounding shoreline used to be marshland. That is its natural state. As I mentioned this was all filled in from excavations done for highway construction in the 1930’s. Now that it about to be undone. The Parks Dept. is about to restore some of the wetlands to the park. A construction fence will go up in a few weeks.
A noteworthy person that grew up nearby in the Hunt’s Point neighborhood who you probably never heard of was Helen Kane. Helen came from modest beginnings and was the youngest of 3 kids. Her father was a German immigrant who struggled to make ends meet and her mom worked in a laundry.
When Helen was in high school she got her first role in a play starring as a queen and her mom reluctantly paid $3 for the costume. By the age of 15 she was performing in professionally first as a singer at Kanes' a major saloon in the Clason Point area (point to direction) which was owned by a relative. She went on to perform in vaudeville including a bit with the Marx Brothers. In 1928, Helen appeared in the musical "Good Boy” and sang the song "I Wanna Be Loved by You" which became famous.
The reason that Helen might seem familiar to you is because a cartoonist named Max Fleischer created the character Betty Boop 1930 with Helen as inspriation. Betty was one of the first animated sex symbols. In 1932 the animated film "Boop-Oop-a-Doop," Betty plays a hig-wire performer in the circus and is harassed by her boss and threatens her virtue. This was very daring at a time when such subject matter was considered taboo. Betty pleads with the ringmaster to cease his advances, as she sings "Don't Take My Boop-Oop-A-Doop Away." Koko the Clown is practicing his juggling outside the tent, and overhears the struggle inside. He leaps in to save Betty, struggling with the ringmaster, who loads him into a cannon and fires it. Koko, who remained hiding inside the cannon, knocks the ringmaster out cold with a mallet, and inquires about Betty's welfare, to which she answers in song, "No, he couldn't take my boop-oop-a-doop away!"
Colin Powell grew up on Kelly Street also in the Hunts Point neighborhood. A new apartment building was just built on Kelly Street that was named after him.
Wiki Helen Hayes and Betty Boop
http://www.nycgovparks.org/parks/X262/highlights/13121
Robert Moses is buried in Woodlawn cemetery
The West Bronx was annexed to New York City (then largely confined to Manhattan) in 1874, and the areas east of the Bronx River in 1895.[4] The Bronx first assumed a distinct legal identity when it became a borough of Greater New York in 1898.
Elevated railways connect to the subway system, which linked to Manhattan in 1904. The great majority lived in rented apartments. The demographic history of the Bronx in the 20th century may be divided into four periods: a boom during 1900–29, with a population growth by a factor of six from 200,000 in 1900 to 1.3 million in 1930. The Great Depression and war years saw a slowing of growth. The 1950s were hard times, as the Bronx decayed 1950–79 from a predominantly middle-class to a predominantly lower-class area with high rates of crime and poverty. Finally the Bronx has enjoyed economic and demographic stabilization since 1980.
Wiki Bronx
Harding Park
This little community of cute bungalows you see here is called Harding Park. It was named after the President at the time that the bungalows were built Warren G. Harding (29th pres) who served from 1921 – 23. (He died suddenly.) But don’t let its quaintness fool you. It was an embattled area as recently as the 1980’s and going back all the way to Native American and Dutch days.
The embattled history goes back to the 1600’s when the Dutch battled the Native Americans who lived in communities along the Bronx River for who knows how long. The tribe was known as the “Siwanoy” and spoke Algonquin. There was a 3-year period of raids back and forth between the Natives and the Dutch called the “Pig Wars.”
The current layout as you see it now dates back to the 1920’s when a real estate developer Thomas Higgs built the bungalows to rent out to summer vacationers. At the time the Clason (pronounced “Clawson”) was a resort area with beaches, dance halls and amusement parks and still plenty of swampland. There were ferries that ran everyday between here and College Point Queens across the river that brought a steady stream of visitors back and forth.
After WWII there was a shortage of housing for the returning veterans and so the bungalow tenants decided to turn them into permanent homes. The residents were mostly Irish, Scandinavian, German and Italian and made their livelihoods from the sea. Now it is mostly Hispanic and is referred to as “Little Puerto Rico.”
In 1959 Robert Moses wanted to tare down the neighborhood, what he called “The Sound View Slums.” Robert Moses tore down a lot of slums around the city and liked modern buildings and expressways. He wanted to do the same here. In fact, there was an agency called “Slum Clearance Committee” of which Moses was the head. The project was to be named “Bronxview Village.” Moses failed because he had come under scrutiny that his buddies had bought the land and would stand to make a large profit when they sold it to the city. There was bad press for Moses about this. The project was not approved by the Board of Estimates. This marked the beginning of the end of Moses. Within a year he resigned from the Slum Clearance Committee and as City Construction Coordinator.
As recently as a few years ago the neighborhood wasn’t even fully tied into the city’s sewage system. They stuff used to go right into the river. There are still unnamed streets that are not on the official city map.
In 1979, the city reclaimed the properties because the landowner didn’t pay his taxes. People owned their homes but not the land itself! They paid ground rent. In 1982 the residents banded together and made a deal with the city to buy their properties where their bungalows stood for cheap about $3,000 each.
1. Times article from 1981 about the Harding Park struggle
http://www.nytimes.com/1981/10/22/nyregion/rent-strike-on-city-land-faces-day-of-reckoning.html
2. Page 300 “Robert Moses and the Modern City” Ballon and Jackson
3. http://www.nytimes.com/1996/12/31/nyregion/hispanic-settlers-transform-harding-park-in-bronx.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm
Concrete Plant Park
Concrete Plant Park was home to a working concrete batch mix plant sitting on the western bank of the Bronx River. According to a report prepared by Public Archaeology Facility at SUNY Binghamton, cement manufacturing began at this site after 1945 and ran until 1987. The Transit Mix Concrete Corporation built the silos, hoppers, and conveyor structures that still stand at Concrete Park today as a reminder of the park's industrial history. The site belonged to the Dept of Transportation and so was a whole to do to transfer ownership to the Parks Dept.
Once underdeveloped, this new waterfront park completed in September 2009 and officially opened to the public October 30th
The closest tracks are CSX freight, but the farther west tracks are Amtrack.
William White Niles 1860 – 1935
“When I first conceived the idea of the Bronx River Parkway, it was not with the thought of building a park driveway but with the purpose of protecting a beautiful little stream, running through a lovely valley, from destruction. The defilement had progressed to such a point that in five years more the river would have been an open sewer creating a forbidding no-man's-land through what is now one of the most beautifully developed suburbs of any city and practically ruining one of the finest city parks...Sewage was discharged into the river wherever sewers were constructed, refuse and garbage were dumped into the river together with rubbish, such as worn out automobile tires, discarded boilers, barrel hoops, everything in fact. The acquisition of the riverbed and adjoining uplands by the parkway commission stopped all these abuses, the river was cleared of rubbish, the discharge of sewage gradually stopped and the river restored to its original condition. The resulting improvement has been almost unbelievable. A high class of residence building immediately commenced and has continued without intermission.”
“From the earliest times it has seemed as though every man's hand was against the river. Although, when our fathers first came over, our rivers were teeming with fish and it would seem as though the desire to protect such a valuable and cheap source of food supply would have furnished a strong motive for their protection, no such inclination is anywhere apparent but from the earliest times whenever a community grew up alongside a river the work of spoliation immediately commenced. The first misuse was the dumping of garbage and other refuse material into the river, then as drainage was undertaken the addition of the community's sewage to the stream, then with the advent of manufactories, the location of the most unattractive utilities along the banks and the drainage of tannin, sludge and acid and other chemicals into the river. This practice has continued to the present day with the result that our rivers are almost devoid of fish and wherever a city has grown up the river banks present so distressing a sight that no one ever thinks of erecting a residence on the shore of the stream or, indeed, any other structure than a factory or a coal yard.”
Bronx River Park built between 1907 – 1925.
The Bronx River Parkway Opened 1925 and went from Kensico Dam in Valhalla to the Botanical Garden. It was the first such parkway in the country. And it was well liked and set the stage for others like it like the Saw Mill River Parkway, the Blue Ridge Parkway in VA and the Pallisades Parkway.
Robert Moses extended it all the way down to the Bruckner Expressway in the 1950’s.
Why did it take so long?
No one imagined that seven years would pass before New York City and Westchester County agreed on the terms of the funding, that it would take three more years to acquire the needed land, and that World War I would put the project on hold. Although in theory the parkway was a joint project ofNew York City and Westchester County, it was more a shotgun marriage than a love match. And yet, with all these obstacles, the parkway that finally opened in 1925 set the standard for roadways in the United States and the world for decades to come.
“It is difficult to overstate the impact that William White Niles (1861-1935) had in the development of Bronx Parks. Niles was born in 1861 in Waterford, New York, to William and Isabel Niles. He attended Dartmouth College and Albany Law School, and the practiced law in New York City.
In 1881, Niles helped to found the New York Park Association. Presenting comparative studies of parkland in foreign cities, predictions of rapid population growth in New York, and rising land values, the Association called for more land for parks in the southern Bronx, which had been annexed by New York City in 1874. This effort culminated in the 1884 New Parks Act and the city’s 1888-90 purchase of lands for Van Cortlandt, Claremont, Crotona, Bronx, St. Mary’s, and Pelham Bay Parks and the Mosholu, Pelham, and Crotona Parkways. The new properties increased the city’s parkland fivefold, from about 1000 acres to about 5000 acres.
Niles joined the New York Bar in 1885, established the firm of Niles & Johnson in 1891, and was elected to the New York State Assembly in 1895. In 1900, he served as counsel to subcommittee on borough government of the New York City Charter-Revision Commission. He was also a member of several civic and social organizations. Niles served as president of the Bronx Society of Arts and Sciences and the Bronx Board of Trade, vice-president of the Citizens Union and the Tree Planting Association, and a member of the City Planning Commission. He married Florence M. Brown in 1912, and they had three children named Charlotte, Roma, and William.
Niles continued to strive for the development of Bronx parkland along the Bronx River. The 23-mile river had been greatly contaminated, and Niles was one of many that called for a solution to protect the quality of Bronx Park. The Bronx River Sewer Commission was established in 1905 and the Bronx River Parkway Commission was created in 1906 to reduce the sewage and beautify the edge of the river. Niles, a Bronx resident, served as the vice-president of the Bronx River Parkway Commission from 1907 to 1925. The commission sought the acquisition of land along the river, and the long process was hailed as a success when the Bronx River Parkway opened in 1925. Niles became head of the Taconic State Park Commission in 1927. He died in Riverdale-on-Hudson on January 12, 1935.”
http://www.nycgovparks.org/parks/bronxpark/highlights/11643
Old Bronx Railroad Stations
http://www.columbia.edu/~brennan/abandoned/bronx.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/29/realestate/29scapes.html
“THE BRONX RIVER PARKWAY” BY BARBARA R. TROETEL, Ph.D
Gilmore Clarke landscape architect also did Pallisades, Blue Ridge Mountain Parkway and Saw Mill River Parkway.
www.bronx-river.com/docs/brprc-History-short.pdf
http://www.aapra.org/Pugsley/NilesWilliam.html
From Stephen DeVillo
The beautiful old building (at 179th Street?) must be the old Peabody Home for Aged and Indigent Women, which it was up to the mid-70s and now is the temporary home of the Bronx River Art Center. And yes, there are rumors of a haunting, but I have no firm details yet. It's also the spot where (cousin) Aaron Burr burned down the Delancey blockhouse in 1779.
West Farms Road is indeed an old road, named for the community formed in the late 1600s of the "ten west farms" by Connecticut Yankees moving on from the town of Westchester to sites west of the Bronx River. Note that curious handlebar bend the road makes immediately south of East Tremont. It is the ghost of what had been an oxbow in the Bronx River, long since straightened out. (Credit Damian for spotting this one!)
None of which has anything to do with old Jonas Bronck, who was only here for four years (1639-1643) and the little patroonship he set up in Morrisania broke up after his death (though the Bronck family, through either his son or nephew, set up in Beaverwyck, near Albany, where there is still a Bronck historic site.) But he did get the river (and eventually the borough) named after him, even though as far as I can tell, his land purchase did not actually extend as far as the Bronx River.
Concrete Plant Park was home to a working concrete batch mix plant sitting on the western bank of the Bronx River. According to a report prepared by Public Archaeology Facility at SUNY Binghamton, cement manufacturing began at this site after 1945 and ran until 1987. The Transit Mix Concrete Corporation built the silos, hoppers, and conveyor structures that still stand at Concrete Park today as a reminder of the park's industrial history. The site belonged to the Dept of Transportation and so was a whole to do to transfer ownership to the Parks Dept.
Once underdeveloped, this new waterfront park completed in September 2009 and officially opened to the public October 30th
The closest tracks are CSX freight, but the farther west tracks are Amtrack.
William White Niles 1860 – 1935
“When I first conceived the idea of the Bronx River Parkway, it was not with the thought of building a park driveway but with the purpose of protecting a beautiful little stream, running through a lovely valley, from destruction. The defilement had progressed to such a point that in five years more the river would have been an open sewer creating a forbidding no-man's-land through what is now one of the most beautifully developed suburbs of any city and practically ruining one of the finest city parks...Sewage was discharged into the river wherever sewers were constructed, refuse and garbage were dumped into the river together with rubbish, such as worn out automobile tires, discarded boilers, barrel hoops, everything in fact. The acquisition of the riverbed and adjoining uplands by the parkway commission stopped all these abuses, the river was cleared of rubbish, the discharge of sewage gradually stopped and the river restored to its original condition. The resulting improvement has been almost unbelievable. A high class of residence building immediately commenced and has continued without intermission.”
“From the earliest times it has seemed as though every man's hand was against the river. Although, when our fathers first came over, our rivers were teeming with fish and it would seem as though the desire to protect such a valuable and cheap source of food supply would have furnished a strong motive for their protection, no such inclination is anywhere apparent but from the earliest times whenever a community grew up alongside a river the work of spoliation immediately commenced. The first misuse was the dumping of garbage and other refuse material into the river, then as drainage was undertaken the addition of the community's sewage to the stream, then with the advent of manufactories, the location of the most unattractive utilities along the banks and the drainage of tannin, sludge and acid and other chemicals into the river. This practice has continued to the present day with the result that our rivers are almost devoid of fish and wherever a city has grown up the river banks present so distressing a sight that no one ever thinks of erecting a residence on the shore of the stream or, indeed, any other structure than a factory or a coal yard.”
Bronx River Park built between 1907 – 1925.
The Bronx River Parkway Opened 1925 and went from Kensico Dam in Valhalla to the Botanical Garden. It was the first such parkway in the country. And it was well liked and set the stage for others like it like the Saw Mill River Parkway, the Blue Ridge Parkway in VA and the Pallisades Parkway.
Robert Moses extended it all the way down to the Bruckner Expressway in the 1950’s.
Why did it take so long?
No one imagined that seven years would pass before New York City and Westchester County agreed on the terms of the funding, that it would take three more years to acquire the needed land, and that World War I would put the project on hold. Although in theory the parkway was a joint project ofNew York City and Westchester County, it was more a shotgun marriage than a love match. And yet, with all these obstacles, the parkway that finally opened in 1925 set the standard for roadways in the United States and the world for decades to come.
“It is difficult to overstate the impact that William White Niles (1861-1935) had in the development of Bronx Parks. Niles was born in 1861 in Waterford, New York, to William and Isabel Niles. He attended Dartmouth College and Albany Law School, and the practiced law in New York City.
In 1881, Niles helped to found the New York Park Association. Presenting comparative studies of parkland in foreign cities, predictions of rapid population growth in New York, and rising land values, the Association called for more land for parks in the southern Bronx, which had been annexed by New York City in 1874. This effort culminated in the 1884 New Parks Act and the city’s 1888-90 purchase of lands for Van Cortlandt, Claremont, Crotona, Bronx, St. Mary’s, and Pelham Bay Parks and the Mosholu, Pelham, and Crotona Parkways. The new properties increased the city’s parkland fivefold, from about 1000 acres to about 5000 acres.
Niles joined the New York Bar in 1885, established the firm of Niles & Johnson in 1891, and was elected to the New York State Assembly in 1895. In 1900, he served as counsel to subcommittee on borough government of the New York City Charter-Revision Commission. He was also a member of several civic and social organizations. Niles served as president of the Bronx Society of Arts and Sciences and the Bronx Board of Trade, vice-president of the Citizens Union and the Tree Planting Association, and a member of the City Planning Commission. He married Florence M. Brown in 1912, and they had three children named Charlotte, Roma, and William.
Niles continued to strive for the development of Bronx parkland along the Bronx River. The 23-mile river had been greatly contaminated, and Niles was one of many that called for a solution to protect the quality of Bronx Park. The Bronx River Sewer Commission was established in 1905 and the Bronx River Parkway Commission was created in 1906 to reduce the sewage and beautify the edge of the river. Niles, a Bronx resident, served as the vice-president of the Bronx River Parkway Commission from 1907 to 1925. The commission sought the acquisition of land along the river, and the long process was hailed as a success when the Bronx River Parkway opened in 1925. Niles became head of the Taconic State Park Commission in 1927. He died in Riverdale-on-Hudson on January 12, 1935.”
http://www.nycgovparks.org/parks/bronxpark/highlights/11643
Old Bronx Railroad Stations
http://www.columbia.edu/~brennan/abandoned/bronx.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/29/realestate/29scapes.html
“THE BRONX RIVER PARKWAY” BY BARBARA R. TROETEL, Ph.D
Gilmore Clarke landscape architect also did Pallisades, Blue Ridge Mountain Parkway and Saw Mill River Parkway.
www.bronx-river.com/docs/brprc-History-short.pdf
http://www.aapra.org/Pugsley/NilesWilliam.html
From Stephen DeVillo
The beautiful old building (at 179th Street?) must be the old Peabody Home for Aged and Indigent Women, which it was up to the mid-70s and now is the temporary home of the Bronx River Art Center. And yes, there are rumors of a haunting, but I have no firm details yet. It's also the spot where (cousin) Aaron Burr burned down the Delancey blockhouse in 1779.
West Farms Road is indeed an old road, named for the community formed in the late 1600s of the "ten west farms" by Connecticut Yankees moving on from the town of Westchester to sites west of the Bronx River. Note that curious handlebar bend the road makes immediately south of East Tremont. It is the ghost of what had been an oxbow in the Bronx River, long since straightened out. (Credit Damian for spotting this one!)
None of which has anything to do with old Jonas Bronck, who was only here for four years (1639-1643) and the little patroonship he set up in Morrisania broke up after his death (though the Bronck family, through either his son or nephew, set up in Beaverwyck, near Albany, where there is still a Bronck historic site.) But he did get the river (and eventually the borough) named after him, even though as far as I can tell, his land purchase did not actually extend as far as the Bronx River.
Transit Mix Concrete Corporation 1940's
Future site of Concrete Plant Park
Willamsbridge Reservoir
Bronx River Background
The New York and Harlem Railroad was constructedbetween 1832 and 1852. One of the company’s founders was a banker John Mason who also President of Chemical Bank.
Cornelius Vanderbilt obtained control of the Hudson River Railroad in 1864, soon after he bought the parallel New York and Harlem Railroad. (Wiki)
The railroad paved the way for the Bronx River valley to become an industrial corridor. During this time, people often used the river for waste disposal. By the end of the nineteenth century the Bronx River had degenerated into what the Bronx Valley Sewer Commission called an “open sewer” in 1896.
The Bronx had many fresh water streams and rivers flowing through it at one point in addition to the Bronx River, Tibbet’s Brook, Westchester Creek and the Hutchinson River (Hall page 44). The Bronx Riverand the Hutchinson Rivers are the only one left exposed the others have been covered over.
The Need for a Reliable Source of Clean Drinking Water
In 1842 the city’s population was 300,000 and per capita usage was 27 gallons a day. Keep in mind this was pre-indoor plumbing. Indoor plumbing became more common in the 1860’s after the civil war. Also these were the days of steam engines a typical factory could use several thousand gallons of water a day.(Source: ??? )
“The population of Manhattan was ballooning, from 1.1 million in 1880 to 1.4 million in 1890. Water consumption rose from 92 mgd in 1880 (about 83 gd per capita) to 145 mgd in 1890.” (Liquid Assets page 53) This works out to be 103 gallons per day per capita!! For comparison today the average person uses about 160 gd.
The need for water to extinguish fires and combat the spread of disease from water born pathogens like Cholera, increased the need for a reliable clean municipal water system.
In 1798, Dr. Joseph Browne suggests building a small dam across the Bronx River below Williamsbridge for a reservoir. It didn’t happen.
1824 Canvass White, an engineer who worked on the Eerie canal and invented a new kind of hydraulic cement studied it again and recommended that it be tapped but it was not carried out.
(Bone page 70) and (“The Water-Supply of the City of New York. 1658-1895” by Edward Wegmann)
In 1874 NYC annexed the Westchester towns of West Farms, Morrisania, and Kingsbridge which all became parts of the Bronx so, its 50,000 residents, it needed more water.
http://www.thirteen.org/bronx/history.html
1879 Commissioner of Public Works Allan Campbell proposed tapping the Bronx River again. This time it stuck.
In 1884 the Old Kensico Dam was built to build a reservoir with Bronx River water using earth and stone and was 45 feet high (verified) and about 100 feet across (estimate). It’s original name was Bronx River Reservoir. The reservoir was 1.5 miles long and 0.5 miles wide, and held 1.6 billion gallons (the Central Park Reservoir holds 1 billion gallons). Water was delivered from it to the Williamsbridge Reservoir via a 4-foot diameter cast iron pipe and supplied up to 20 million gallons per day. The cast iron pipes for were made at the West Point Foundry who also made them for the Croton Aqueduct. (You can visit the remains of this Foundry.)
The Williamsbridge Reservoir was completed and operational in 1889 and held 150 million gallons of water and provided 20 mgd of water to residents. It was made of stone, the very same stone used for the keepers house and was 13 acres and 40 feet deep.
The reservoir was taken off line in 1919 as it was no longer needed because the New Croton Aqueduct had been completed in 1893 and the Catskill system in 1917. It was turned into a park in 1937 by Robert Moses.
The Keeper's House, located at the northeast end of the reservoir, was constructed in 1889-90 gray-tan gneiss with smooth, speckled-gray granite trim. . It was abandoned by the city when the reservoir was no longer needed in 1919. Plans were made in the 1930s to convert it to a branch library. However, Dr. Isaac H. Barkey, a physicist and engineer, and his wife Dorothy, interested in purchasing the house, convinced the city to build a new library nearby and acquired the property in 1946. After five decades in residence, the Barkeys sold the house in 1998 to the Mosholu Preservation Corporation whose offices are contained within.
“The Keepers House is the only surviving building in New York City associated with the Bronx and Byram Rivers water supply system.” LPC, 2000
The Bronx River System was considered ill conceived because the New Croton System came on line in 1893, shortly after the Bronx System went online in 1889. The new Croton system supplied 300 mgd as compared to 20 mgd. It was considered a graft- project for Boss Tweed’s friends.
Old Croton 1837-1843 95 mgd
Bronx River 1880-1885 20 mgd
New Croton System 1884-1893 300 mgd
http://www.nycgovparks.org/parks/X104/highlights/6373
http://www.lehman.edu/vpadvance/artgallery/arch/buildings/Williamsbridge.html
http://www.flickr.com/photos/emilio_guerra/4457220974/
http://www.nytimes.com/1998/12/20/realestate/streetscapes-norwood-section-bronx-for-1890-reservoir-keeper-s-house-new-use.html?scp=3&sq=Christopher%20Gray%20keeper%27s%20house&st=cse
The new Kensico reservoir was constructed from 1911 – 1917. It holds 38 billion gallons 7 square miles, about 4 miles long and 2 miles wide. The reservoir is supplied by the Catskill and Delaware Aqueducts whose reservoirs are about 70 miles to the north and west. NYC uses 1.2 billion gallons of water a day. 15 million residents of NYC and towns along the way use this water.
The dam is 400 feet upstream from the original dam. It is 1,825 feet long and 307 feet high. The top that you are looking at is about 100 feet up. Most of it you can’t see and is underground. So about 200 feet of it are below us.
It is made of concrete but the part we are looking at its pretty face that is made of local granite that was quarried by Italian stonemasons at the Cranberry Lake Quarry nearby. If you drive along the roads you will find an active quarry. I got lost while driving up here last week and I stumbled on it. There are other types of granite too from other quarries in New England.
Up top, it is 28 feet wide and there is a road that crosses it that the DEP closed after 9/11. At its base underground it is 233 feet wide! And for all you math heads, it tapers up in the shape of a hyperbola.
Chemicals are added here at DEP buildings up the road on the left. The reservoir also serves as a settling basin for Cat/Del water to let sediment fall out.
(Hall, Page 64 )
Bronx River Background
The New York and Harlem Railroad was constructedbetween 1832 and 1852. One of the company’s founders was a banker John Mason who also President of Chemical Bank.
Cornelius Vanderbilt obtained control of the Hudson River Railroad in 1864, soon after he bought the parallel New York and Harlem Railroad. (Wiki)
The railroad paved the way for the Bronx River valley to become an industrial corridor. During this time, people often used the river for waste disposal. By the end of the nineteenth century the Bronx River had degenerated into what the Bronx Valley Sewer Commission called an “open sewer” in 1896.
The Bronx had many fresh water streams and rivers flowing through it at one point in addition to the Bronx River, Tibbet’s Brook, Westchester Creek and the Hutchinson River (Hall page 44). The Bronx Riverand the Hutchinson Rivers are the only one left exposed the others have been covered over.
The Need for a Reliable Source of Clean Drinking Water
In 1842 the city’s population was 300,000 and per capita usage was 27 gallons a day. Keep in mind this was pre-indoor plumbing. Indoor plumbing became more common in the 1860’s after the civil war. Also these were the days of steam engines a typical factory could use several thousand gallons of water a day.(Source: ??? )
“The population of Manhattan was ballooning, from 1.1 million in 1880 to 1.4 million in 1890. Water consumption rose from 92 mgd in 1880 (about 83 gd per capita) to 145 mgd in 1890.” (Liquid Assets page 53) This works out to be 103 gallons per day per capita!! For comparison today the average person uses about 160 gd.
The need for water to extinguish fires and combat the spread of disease from water born pathogens like Cholera, increased the need for a reliable clean municipal water system.
In 1798, Dr. Joseph Browne suggests building a small dam across the Bronx River below Williamsbridge for a reservoir. It didn’t happen.
1824 Canvass White, an engineer who worked on the Eerie canal and invented a new kind of hydraulic cement studied it again and recommended that it be tapped but it was not carried out.
(Bone page 70) and (“The Water-Supply of the City of New York. 1658-1895” by Edward Wegmann)
In 1874 NYC annexed the Westchester towns of West Farms, Morrisania, and Kingsbridge which all became parts of the Bronx so, its 50,000 residents, it needed more water.
http://www.thirteen.org/bronx/history.html
1879 Commissioner of Public Works Allan Campbell proposed tapping the Bronx River again. This time it stuck.
In 1884 the Old Kensico Dam was built to build a reservoir with Bronx River water using earth and stone and was 45 feet high (verified) and about 100 feet across (estimate). It’s original name was Bronx River Reservoir. The reservoir was 1.5 miles long and 0.5 miles wide, and held 1.6 billion gallons (the Central Park Reservoir holds 1 billion gallons). Water was delivered from it to the Williamsbridge Reservoir via a 4-foot diameter cast iron pipe and supplied up to 20 million gallons per day. The cast iron pipes for were made at the West Point Foundry who also made them for the Croton Aqueduct. (You can visit the remains of this Foundry.)
The Williamsbridge Reservoir was completed and operational in 1889 and held 150 million gallons of water and provided 20 mgd of water to residents. It was made of stone, the very same stone used for the keepers house and was 13 acres and 40 feet deep.
The reservoir was taken off line in 1919 as it was no longer needed because the New Croton Aqueduct had been completed in 1893 and the Catskill system in 1917. It was turned into a park in 1937 by Robert Moses.
The Keeper's House, located at the northeast end of the reservoir, was constructed in 1889-90 gray-tan gneiss with smooth, speckled-gray granite trim. . It was abandoned by the city when the reservoir was no longer needed in 1919. Plans were made in the 1930s to convert it to a branch library. However, Dr. Isaac H. Barkey, a physicist and engineer, and his wife Dorothy, interested in purchasing the house, convinced the city to build a new library nearby and acquired the property in 1946. After five decades in residence, the Barkeys sold the house in 1998 to the Mosholu Preservation Corporation whose offices are contained within.
“The Keepers House is the only surviving building in New York City associated with the Bronx and Byram Rivers water supply system.” LPC, 2000
The Bronx River System was considered ill conceived because the New Croton System came on line in 1893, shortly after the Bronx System went online in 1889. The new Croton system supplied 300 mgd as compared to 20 mgd. It was considered a graft- project for Boss Tweed’s friends.
Old Croton 1837-1843 95 mgd
Bronx River 1880-1885 20 mgd
New Croton System 1884-1893 300 mgd
http://www.nycgovparks.org/parks/X104/highlights/6373
http://www.lehman.edu/vpadvance/artgallery/arch/buildings/Williamsbridge.html
http://www.flickr.com/photos/emilio_guerra/4457220974/
http://www.nytimes.com/1998/12/20/realestate/streetscapes-norwood-section-bronx-for-1890-reservoir-keeper-s-house-new-use.html?scp=3&sq=Christopher%20Gray%20keeper%27s%20house&st=cse
The new Kensico reservoir was constructed from 1911 – 1917. It holds 38 billion gallons 7 square miles, about 4 miles long and 2 miles wide. The reservoir is supplied by the Catskill and Delaware Aqueducts whose reservoirs are about 70 miles to the north and west. NYC uses 1.2 billion gallons of water a day. 15 million residents of NYC and towns along the way use this water.
The dam is 400 feet upstream from the original dam. It is 1,825 feet long and 307 feet high. The top that you are looking at is about 100 feet up. Most of it you can’t see and is underground. So about 200 feet of it are below us.
It is made of concrete but the part we are looking at its pretty face that is made of local granite that was quarried by Italian stonemasons at the Cranberry Lake Quarry nearby. If you drive along the roads you will find an active quarry. I got lost while driving up here last week and I stumbled on it. There are other types of granite too from other quarries in New England.
Up top, it is 28 feet wide and there is a road that crosses it that the DEP closed after 9/11. At its base underground it is 233 feet wide! And for all you math heads, it tapers up in the shape of a hyperbola.
Chemicals are added here at DEP buildings up the road on the left. The reservoir also serves as a settling basin for Cat/Del water to let sediment fall out.
(Hall, Page 64 )
Williamsbridge Reservoir 1890
Bronx River Parkway 1922