Riverbanks 11

Here are previous riverbanks posts, although for some inexplicable reason, they are not indexed in order.

Name the riverbank in the image below?  

Above and below, that’s Manhattan, as seen from about 30 miles out.  It would take another four hours before we passed the 59th Street Bridge.  The darker image in the center of the photo below is Vane’s Brooklyn, which we were following.

The sunset colors below in the photo below taken about an hour after the top photo were stunning.  

Three hours later we approached the Hell Gate bridges.  See Thomas D. Witte hidden in the lights?

Passing the northern tip of Roosevelt Island, the refurbished lighthouse looked like this, compared with

this image of the very same lighthouse I’d taken only eight days earlier.  The Nellie Bly “faces” tribute there is worth seeing by day.  The main channel passes to the left in the photo below.

Here is said 59th Street Bridge looking at the Graduate Hotel (No, that’s not a 1967 movie reference.) and some buildings of Cornell Tech.

New on this bank of Manhattan are the American Copper Buildings, here 

framing a seasonally-lit Empire State Building . . . ESB.  That belt joining the two . . . that houses a swimming pool.

The repurposed Havermeyer Sugar building has just added a new but retro sign, alluding to the former enterprise of the building.

Behold the 120-year-old Williamsburg Bridge 

and then eventually the 140-year-old Brooklyn Bridge. The 113-year-old Manhattan Bridge is in between the two. 

After rounding the “horn,” we headed up the North River for the Hudson, passing other new buildings framing the ESB. This twisting pair is called The Eleventh. The ghostly white tower is the Bank of America Tower, and below it is IAC.

Notice a pattern here in framing the ESB?  The “web” of course is The Vessel, a structure whose origins by water I posted about here and here.

Looking toward the Manhattan side of the GW Bridge, that red speck at its base is the “little red lighthouse” at Jeffreys Point made obsolete by the GW itself. 

As down broke, we were north of Poughkeepsie, breaking ice and about to turn into the Rondout. 

All photos, WVD, who hopes you’ve enjoyed this phantasmagorical sequence of the five boros as seen from  the sixth.

 

Vessel Commands

Many thanks to you all who reached out about yesterday’s post.  Let me recap what I’ve learned since taking the photos on Sunday and posting them on Monday.  First, the dock has been returned to Pier 66 on the North River, where it seems to have broken loose Friday.  Sunday in the wee hours it was reported–as an unseen but substantial piece of debris– in the wee hours off Caddells on the ebbing KVK, which is even farther west than where I saw it Sunday soon after dawn.  This means it was shuttling with the tides west and east in the KVK.  Since being retrieved by Driftmaster, it was claimed by owners over near Pier 66 and towed back there, reportedly, and not by USACE.

Ironically, I walked past Pier 66 yesterday midmorning, but didn’t notice an absence.  I’ve walked there only twice in the past three months.  Here’s a post I did from one of the walks in late January under the Whatzit title.

There’s that other Vessel along the west side of Midtown, one which seems to be commanding attention and controversy, as here.

I first became aware of the planned structure in April 2017, when I caught and posted this photo of Sarah Ann and barge  under the title Whatzit 36.

Here’s October 2017.

And here’s March 25, 2019.  If we zoom in on the top of the “Vessel,” you’ll see

people who are standing there.

You can offer a new name . . . I’d go with Hudson Yards Carapace, as it reminds me of a metallic carapace of a sea turtle, but I’ll bet you have your own ideas.

 

All photos by Will Van Dorp, who thinks the name “vessel” has to go.

Earth and Fire

Earth . . .  crushed rocky pieces of it . . . and

fire . . . at least its most widespread  fuel  . . .  move through the sixth boro all hours of day and night.  Franklin Reinauer approaches as Evening Mist distances.  Both earth and fire are essential

not only in the hinterland but also

in the metropolis to build and run.  Robert IV pushes the scow above.

How much aggregate comes from upriver, I’m not sure, but I’ve seen rafts of it float down at all hours  of day and night.

Petroleum has been refined in this area since the 1840s along Newtown Creek and since 1875 in Bayonne, then at Prentice Oil.  Ellen S. Bouchard leaves the Buttermilk.

Rock seems to head every which way, here Captain Zeke pushes through the Buttermilk into the East River.

Here Evening Tide spins Barge No. 262 into a berth along the Red Hook waterfront.  Now, identifying those buildings . . . starting from the tall ships at South Street Seaport at lower left:  Verizon Building; Conde Nast (41, with antenna);  Met Life (42)  with Bank of America Tower (4)  right behind it; Empire State building, of course; Met Life Tower (106);  New York Life, with elongated gold pyramid; Con Edison Building.  I’m not sure what the green-pyramid-tipped building behind the Con Ed Building is .  Also, notice schooner Pioneer in the lower right corner of the foto.   The numbers in parentheses denote rank among tallest buildings in the US.

A water train of aggregate pushes past the ventilator for the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel.

Charles D. McAllister assists Evening Tide get the barge into the berth.  In the background are the Manhattan-side Tower of Brooklyn Bridge; Chrysler Building (6); Citigroup Center (22); and (just behind Evening Tide’s upper wheelhouse) Trump World Tower.

Aegean Sea pushes empty rock scows past 1 New York Plaza, Manhattan’s southernmost skyscraper aka gratte-ciel.  The ferry terminals (at water level, left and right) have boats leaving for Staten Island and less frequently for Governors Island.

Patriot Service, port of registry New Orleans, pushes a light barge, most likely toward one of the refineries in the Kills.

Which brings us to the elephant in the elevator, so to speak, the ongoing issuing of liquid mineral in the Gulf of Mexico.  Lincoln Sea, below, is pushing DBL 140, so-named because its capacity is 140,000 barrels. Current estimates of the spill daily flow rate range from 5000 to 70,000 barrels; i.e., one of these barges full every two days for the top end of this range.  It may be hard to judge the dimensions of DBL 140:  504′ loa x 78′ x 37.’

Brooklyn has its own lingering spill under  Newtown Creek:  over 500,000 barrels of petroleum products.  See an article from today’s Times here.

Read Oil-Electric’s post on MV Joe Griffin‘s cargo  here.  Keep in mind that a common feature among all the buildings identified in this post is the inability to open their windows or (easily) do a walk-up.  One implication is that all of them are air-conditioned, i.e., unbearable and practically unscalable without electricity.

Thinking about the spill got me to reread Lisa Margonelli’s Oil on the Brain today: some stats from her book include … about 7000 fuel tanker truck accidents since 2000 leaving 49 people dead and (from the National Academy of Science, 2002) “drivers and (recreational) boaters spill more oil every year than the Exxon Valdez (11 million gallons);  leaking oil from cars and trucks and two-stroke engines adds nearly 19 million gallons to waterways and the sea every year.”  I presume that means in the US.

All fotos taken this week by Will Van Dorp.

Related but belated:  YouTube turns five years old today.  YouTube makes possible footage like this one of the worst ever offshore drilling accident, 1988, Piper Alpha, North Sea.