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THE OLD AMERICAN CAN FACTORY ARTISTS COLLECTIVE, ISSUE PROJECT ROOM & ROOFTOP FILMS
base aerial: Bing Birds Eye Aerials, 2009
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The Gowanus Canal is a historic industrial canal in the heart of the up and coming Gowanus neighborhood. Turn off your electronic worlds, and have a look around...
Believe the Hype ...
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THE BAT CAVE & KLEZMER DANCE HALL
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STREAMS
14 DENTON MILL & THE BATTLE OF LONG ISLAND
VISIBLE AT LOW TIDE
Alonzo Chappel , Battle of Long Island, 1858
GOWANUS CANAL CONSERVANCY SALT LOT RAIN GARDENS
MAGICAL HIDDEN WORLDS
Denton Mills Brook, Eymund Diegel, 2011
OUR HISTORIC SOURCE OF LIGHT AND TOXICS
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Bat Cave Dance Hall, Leif Percifield, 2011
& VIEWING STEPS
Burn Brothers Coal Chutes, Bing Aerials 2009
THE GOWANUS CANAL
DISCOVER POPULAR DISPOSAL SITES !
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STEAM PUNK STEEL LUNGS
GCC Rain Garden, Eymund Diegel, 2011
HISTORIC GOWANUS BEACH & ORIGINAL SHORELINE
NEIGHBORS
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Metropolitan Metropolit n Manufactured Gas Plant, 1930
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Al (Scarface) Capone, circa 1919
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A MEDIEVAL SEWAGE SYSTEM & DIRTY POETRY
A HIP WAY TO LEARN ABOUT POLLUTION !
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SWIM WITH MUSKRATS !
IT ALL STARTS HERE !
MASSIVE MIGRATIONS TO MEXICO
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Gowanus Cranes, Tracy Collins, 2007
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Proteus Gowanus Coal Sample, Suzanne DeChillo, NY Times, 2010
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THE HISTORY OF SLAVERY IN AN OYSTER
1880 Brooklyn Ward 10 Map
Empress Tree, unknown author
Oysters, PBS Gowanus Reflections, Diego Cupola, 2010
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THE EMPTY VESSEL PROJECT SAC DRAFT KET T ST REE BEER ! T
Gowanus Canoe Dock, NY Daily News, 2010
Canoeing & Superfund Tourism Map
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Things presented on this map are approximate, and may contain errors of fact and even fiction. Please note that when purchasing a cup of “Gowanus Superblend” coffee from d’Amicos on Court Street, that their beverages are extremely hot but delicious. DRAFT MAP - MAY 2011 - issued for legend collection purposes and community information sharing by eymund@gmail.com.
The Gowanus Canal
Fun Things to See and Imagine While Paddling Your Canoe along Brooklyn’s Coolest Superfund Site
Raindrops on the Oil Slicked Waters of the Gowanus Canal, Diego Cupola, 2010
Welcome to Brooklyn’s coolest Superfund Tourism site.
But it’s getting better, thanks to Federal, State, City and Community efforts, and people like yourself who continue visiting the Canal. One of the best ways to reconnect with our water based history and getting educated about pollution is to do it by canoe.
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Is it safe ? Are our delicious local draft beers bad for you ? Some doctors say so. Here’s your chance to talk about relative risk. Compared to putting gas in your car, bleaching your laundry, eating junk food, and puffing cigarettes while watching the latest TV Travel Channel feature on the Gowanus - Hell - sunset canoeing exercise is good for you. But yeah, don't drink the water and please wear a life vest. Below are some stories to look for as you paddle along Brooklyn’s own River of Babylon to a cleaner future.
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FIRST KNOWN LAWSUIT IN AMERICA in 1644, Adam Brouwer, a German mercenary is hired by the Dutch West India Company to slaughter Indians. After being involved in a scandal, under Governor Kieft, involving the use of Indian heads as bowling balls on Bowling Green, he moves to Gowanus and digs out the sandbar blocking local farmers’ boat access to his tidal flour mill on Gowanus Creek, one of the first such mills in America. But he gets picky about who he will grind grain for, hence the first known customer service lawsuit in America. The location of that famous legal sand bar, is at what is now the Brooklyn Queens Expressway - this should be your signal to turn around your canoe, unless you are an experienced boater who can handle currents and waves.
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The name “Gowanus” comes from the Indian Chief Gowan, who lived near at Bennet’s Cove (around 27th Street). Gowan in Algonquin means “Place of Lying Down”, or “the perfect place to chill out”.
HISTORY OF SLAVERY IN AN OYSTER In the 4th Street Basin, at low tide, clinging onto the steel bulwark, can be observed the last known descendent of the Nicholas Vechte’s 1709 Oyster Farm, who built what became the now relocated Old Stone House. One of the main reasons for the original agricultural prosperity for the farms and oyster ponds around the Gowanus, was that in the 1650's to 1750's the area supplied foodstuffs for slave economies of the Caribbean islands, including Bermuda. This was because the tropical soils of the islands were more profitable to farm for sugar cane, than food - but the slaves still had to be fed. The Gowanus was a "global" brand even then. Though the oysters have not been able to survive Gowanus pollution, look for the mussels, about 2 feet below the high tide line. They each filter 75 gallons a day of contaminated water.
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CHINESE TRANSPORT ECOLOGY Near the Union Street Bridge, note the Empress Tree (Paulownia tomentosa, nicknamed “Queen of the Gowanus”). The trees growing out of the raw concrete of the Canal are there because their seed pods were originally used like foam pellets for packing porcelain in the China trade, and are
MASSIVE MIGRATIONS TO MEXICO Because of Gowanus wind patterns, around September, Monarch butterflies swoop down from Park Slope and follow the Canal on their way to Mexico. They feed on Milkweed, (Asclepias syriaca ), now being actively replanted along the Gowanus by the Gowanus Canal Conservancy (GCC). Because you may be donning a life vest soon, did you know that during World War 2, milkweed pods were used to make the “Mae West” life Jacket. (you need 24 pods) If you survived a plane crash in one, you became a member of the "Goldfish Club". Don’t worry, the canoes are very stable. A MEDIEVAL SEWAGE SYSTEM & DIRTY POETRY A 150 years ago New York’s sewer system was designed with the concept that rainwater could help flush out the sewer pipes to local rivers. With the 1977 Clean Water Act of it was decided sewage plants were a good idea, but during that time the the City’s fields and backyard gardens had become cement patios and parking lots. Rainwater now overloaded the undersized sewer pipes. That excess rain spills into the Canal through Combined Sewer Overflows or CSOs as diluted sewage, averaging a million gallons a day, concentrated during rain storms. This is where the “floatables” such as “Coney Island Whitefish” (used condoms) and “Fatbergs” (coagulated restaurant grease) come from. The sewage is the primary health contaminant in the Canal, and will still be there after the Superfund cleanup. The round balls you see on the a water hold up pipes to oxygenate the water, until the Flushing Tunnel is reopened in 2014 to pump more fresh water into the Canal. The best time to view floatables is in rainy April, when the Coney Island Whitefish migrate home to their spawning grounds. February is the month with the cleanest water. 3 CSOs are worth visiting (see map) - RH 34, because you can get your canoe into the sewer tunnel, OH 007 because it contributes industrial pollutants from adjacent factories, and RH 35, because though it only drains 6% of the sewershed, contributes 35% of the Canal’s sewage. If you want to photograph floating sewage - the strange beauty of America’s technological paradox, go to the bridges. You can quote Oscar Wilde’s “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars” and then go home and bash out some cement as part of the City’s Green Infrastructure Plan.
The Adam Brouwer’s Mill was on the site of what is now the Proteus “Hall of the Gowanus” a mini museum of historical maps and digital archives at 543 Union Street.. It is rumored that at midnight in a canoe under the Union Street Bridge, you can still hear the ghostly thud of skulls hitting bowling pins.
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Brooklyn would still be a part of Canada. To celebrate both this strategic historic turning point, and the now sparkling waters of the Gowanus that are expected with the Superfund cleanup and new Flushing Tunnel, canoe to this spot to visualize an underwater monument tracing the course of this ‘Bridge to Freedom” . For those following Brooklyn’s Revolutionary Trail, such a monument will serve to remind us that by going backward we also move forward.
indicative of the global waves of commerce and transport ecologies that have swept through the Gowanus. They also were the preferred wood for Chinese bridal dowry chests.
It’s polluted - read all about it in the 2011 US Environmental Protection Agency’s Gowanus Superfund Report. So polluted, its worth the visit.
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TRASH MONSTERS The average American generates an average of 6 pounds of thrash a day, and the Gowanus provides the opportunity to study this massive torrent of cultural artifacts headed by barge and container to China and India, the new world centers of recycling. Stacks of old Frank Sinatra records and flattened Barbie Dolls can be viewed from the 4th Street Basin, and south of the elevated Subway tracks, your video camera may capture the satisfying crunch sound of a Victorian cast iron bathtub in the jaws of the metal eating cranes.
THE BRIDGE TO AMERICA UNDERWATER MEMORIAL On the 27th of August 1776, a critical battle was fought between the forces of England, and it’s former colonists of America. Had the now independent Americans not managed a strategic retreat across the Brouwer’s Mill bridge of Gowanus Creek, American independence would have been crushed, and
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FRIENDLY NEIGHBORS & BODY DUMPING The Canal has an exaggerated reputation for body disposal. According to policemen in Alisson Prete’s classic movie “Lavender Lake”, the waters only received an average body and a half annually during its more turbulent decades. Gowanus is only a third rate dumping ground. The best place to dump a body ? : That honor goes to Pelham Bay Park in the Bronx, and Jamaica Bay. Gangster Al Capone lived near the Old Stone House at 38 Garfield Place and was married at St Mary, Star of the Sea Church on Court Street. While walking the “Sopranos” tour, take advantage of the superb neighborhood pizzerias and other great restaurants on Smith and Court Street and 5th and 7th Avenue in Park Slope. STEAM PUNK STEEL LUNGS & TOXIC COAL TAR These rising and falling gas tank holders, built by the Brooklyn Union Gas Company, next to mountains of coal, dwarfed many of the new luxury condominiums that are now proposed for the same sites. The new street lights they provided revolutionized Brooklyn stoop culture: “Sailors and hookers, - that’s all this neighborhood was then - sailors and hookers ! The new street gas lights let the sailors pick out the pretty ones.” (97 year old Mrs C. quoted from her Sackett Street rocking chair). These Manufactured Gas Plants became the main source of underground coal tar pollutant plumes, up to 100 feet deep, that the Superfund team will be figuring out how to cleanup. You can view the official “Star of the Gowanus” Superfund sample and historical photos of the plants at the Hall of the Gowanus to learn more about our industrial past.
of coal brought in by barge. Old Central was finally shuttered in 1974. “The canal became sooo silted up with muck, it was impossible to run the plant and steam condensing units using this polluted water” (Robert Lobenstein, the retired superintendent of the Power Dept. for the Brooklyn Rapid Transit Subway System.) The massive old water screw, a Arab invention, can be seen on top of the buried 1st Street basin. The Powerhouse then became a Hasidic Jewish Dance Hall during the 80s, and then got it’s nickname the “Bat Cave” when it became a Punk Anarchist heroin flophouse. The new “Bat Houses” on this site, installed by GCC, hope to attract bats back to the Canal.
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GHOST STREAMS & DAYLIGHT Walt Whitman, a Brooklyn poet writes in Leaves of Grass that “the press of my feet to the earth springs a hundred affections” and through physical contact with the industrial ecology of the Gowanus, new feelings and hopes for this damaged environment will emerge. The original streams that fed Gowanus Creek never disappeared, and their clear outflows can be observed at low tide from hidden cracks in the rotting bulwarks. Observed outflows are marked by blue dots on the map. Many of these, such as the remnants of Denton Mill’s Creek run underneath public right of ways, and provide opportunities for stream “daylighting” revitalization as the City’s Green Belt and public access ambitions for the waterfront move forward. The Fourth Street Basin is a popular spot for herons hunting for small fish.
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DENTON MILL & THE BATTLE OF LONG ISLAND The buried First Street Basin, opposite the 2nd Street Canoe Dock, was the site of one of the critical battles of the 1776 Battle of Brooklyn. It was also the site of one of the first Public Landings in Brooklyn, and the small island adjacent to the Mill was the rumored burial spot of soldiers killed during the Battle. During the 1960’s the basin was illegally filled by mobster’s trucks dumping contaminated rubble. The Superfund Investigation found toxic levels of mercury there. Look for the flowing stream at the pipe spraypainted with a “20”. You can visualize the water trickling over the silvery mercury coated skulls and think about some of the challenges the Cleanup Team will face to deal with this pollutant dispersal.
RAIN GARDENS & VIEWING STEPS At the end of 2nd Avenue at the Canal is the perfect place to offer or toss an engagement ring. After wiping away the tears, get a slice of warm pie from Four and Twenty Blackbirds, at 3rd Ave and 8th Street. All tossed diamonds will go to the worthy cause of supporting the Gowanus Canal Conservancy’s Water Protection and Habitat Restoration efforts.
Gowanus plants are typical of species that have evolved to adapt to the new Global City ecology. Of particular interest are metallophyte plants, plants adapted to the toxicity of human activities, from Roman lead mines to African copper spoils. Four in particular make up the Gowanus Superfund Salad Phytoremediation recipe: Mugwort (Artemisia vulgaris) Chicory (Cichorum intybus), Common Lambsquarters ( Chenopodium album) Asiatic dayflower (Commelina communis). All in theory edible, if your body is craving a shot of toxic heavy metals.
MAGICAL HIDDEN WORLDS The Burn Brothers Coal Pockets were built between 1915 and 1938, and stored coal, and for a while metal ores, for distribution via barge and truck to the energy intensive businesses around the Gowanus. They are currently abandoned, but an amazing secret “tube ecology” has developed within them, as they are opened to the sky, and an example of the life that reemerges in the “World Without Us”. You can also observe the nesting pairs of kestrels that prey on pigeons that live in the tubes. THE BAT CAVE & KLEZMER DANCE HALL The largest building along the Gowanus used to provide power for the Brooklyn Trolley system. It is owned by Africa Israel, an Israeli Russian corporation that made its fortune in the Angolan blood diamonds and weapons trade. The Bat Cave could be yours for $27 million. Built around 1896, it was an active powerhouse until October 1938, feeding off mountains
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COLES MILL POND This was a tidal mill pond excavated by slaves out of the Gowanus Marshes, and the namesake of the still existing “Mill Street”, intersecting with Court Street, home of some of Brooklyn’s finest restaurants. It was subsequently filled in by coal ash and urban garbage, and is the proposed site for Gowanus Green, a large residential development and community park.
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CARROLL BRIDGE Did you know the American Declaration of Independence was a government document you could smoke? Benjamin Franklin had a penchant for pot, and the founding fathers wrote our Founding Principles on his paper made of Cannabis sativa, or marihuana . One of the Declaration’s signers, Charles Carroll, was honored by local appreciative teenagers with the naming of the Carroll Street Bridge. Though you wont find Cannabis growing by the Gowanus, look for Indian Pokeweed - its crushed berries provided the ink that allowed us to write “We the People..”.
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SUNKEN PIRATE SHIPS, LOCKED TRUNKS AND THE LEGEND OF THE GOWANUS MERMEN The 2011 Superfund Sonar Survey of the Canal bottom revealed sunken boats and other mysterious objects that may provide answers to many of the Police Department’s cold cases. These sunken wrecks are rumored to be inhabited by aquatic beings called “Mermen”. To find out more about these and other species that inhabit the Canal, visit the Urban Divers Estuary Conservancy at the Ikea Park in Red Hook. These sunken “cultural artifacts” reflect the barging history of the Canal. With the construction of the Erie Canal in 1825, The Gowanus Creek’s mill economy, based on the tidal energy of the marshes, was supplanted by factories using the energy of shipped coal from upstate mines. The creek was dredged and straightened from 1853 to 1870 to take advantage of it’s strategic industrial location for the growing City of Brooklyn. With advent of containerized trucking in the 1970’s, Gowanus pollution shifted from the water to the air. You can admire the polluting plumes of PM 10 (very fine particulate matter) from the stream of traffic on the BQE Bridge. If you have to ask, the Gowanus Canal’s buried toxicity will have less of an impact on your kid’s asthma than the local truck yards.
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THE SECOND STREET CANOE DOCK & SUPERFUNd SITE Though this guide is not an official map of the Gowanus Dredgers, Canoe Club, take advantage of their friendliness during your strolls around the Gowanus to visit their dock at the end of Second Street at the Gowanus Canal. They run boating events on Wednesday’s and Saturdays during the summer, both there, and at the Louis Valentino Park in Red Hook and Brooklyn Bridge Park. Enjoy your stay ! This map and other Gowanus historical documents is available on line at the Proteus Gowanus digital archive: http://issuu.com/proteusgowanus You cans share your own stories and legends at info@proteusgowanus.com historical notes by eymund@gmail.com Proteus Gowanus
Gowanus Boat Dispatcher, 1949, courtesy Brooklyn Public Library