Remains of the Bay

As part of Jamaica Bay Unit of the Gateway National Recreation Area, Dead Horse Bay is now a protected environment along with the other historic and natural sites in the area like Floyd Bennett Field, Fort Tilden, Jacob Riis Park and the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge.

Though hardly pristine, the stretch of beach is a far cry from its years as a garbage dump for New York. From the New York Times:

Dead Horse Bay sits at the western edge of a marshland once dotted by more than two-dozen horse-rendering plants, fish oil factories and garbage incinerators. From the 1850's until the 1930's, the carcasses of dead horses and other animals from New York City streets were used to manufacture glue, fertilizer and other products at the site. The chopped-up, boiled bones were later dumped into the water. The squalid bay, then accessible only by boat, was reviled for the putrid fumes that hung overhead. A rugged community of laborers, many of them Irish, Polish and Italian immigrants, lived in relative isolation on neighboring Barren Island, which shared the bay's unsavory reputation. (story) 

You can read about life on Barren Island in even greater detail, in this New York Times article from 1939. It is a report on the last 25 families to remain in the area as it was being cleared for construction of the Belt Parkway.

Here are some finds from a hot sticky early summer outing ...

Alphabet City North

Nothing wakes me up in the morning like a good vestige of NYC history. This one was in plain sight and had me sit bolt upright on my way to an Upper East Side doctor’s appointment. That’s UPPER, not LOWER East Side (aka Loisaida aka Alphabet City aka The East Village). Why was “Ave. A” incised on a building up on 77th St. and York Avenue? Everyone knows the lettered avenues in Manhattan start below 14th St.

Well, that wasn’t always the case.

The Museum of the City of New York has an exhibition on now “The Greatest Grid,” marking the centennial of Manhattan’s famous street plan of 1811. There you can see the original hand-drawn map showing the twelve avenues that were designed to run the length of the island, starting at Houston Street.

East of 1st Avenue, however, were two outcroppings of land. The one between Houston and 14th St. was wide enough to accommodate four additional avenues. Those were given the letter names of A, B, C, and D. The land east of 1st Ave. from 59th St. to 91st St. was only wide enough for two avenues; Avenue A, which became York Avenue in 1928 and Avenue B, which is now East End Avenue.

P.S. 158 Bayard Taylor, between 77th and 78th Streets was built in the mid 1890s, which is why it bears the inscribed address. Read about the renaming of the avenue in honor of Sgt. Alvin York at Inside the Apple (hint, it had to do with money).


Speaking of renamed avenues, I’m happy to report that this lovely vestige of pre-1945 Manhattan still glows green on the wall of a subway exit at Rockefeller Center. I’m always relieved to see it when I’m there, because I can’t imagine it standing a chance of repair if it is ever damaged. The name change of “Sixth Avenue” to “Avenue of the Americas” was also a scheme for increasing real estate values. It just never seemed to take in the same way “York” did. Not as catchy, maybe?

Ephemeral New York reports that we've got the business owners of Sixth Avenue to thank for the name-change:

In the 1940s, they argued that the then-dingy avenue (the El had recently been dismantled above it) needed some sprucing up.

One way to do that would be to get Central and South American countries to build consulates and company HQs on the avenue. Real-estate bigwig Leonard Spear took credit for that idea.

In 1945, city council members were convinced, and Mayor La Guardia signed the name change into law. In the 1950s, signs representing different countries in the Americas went up all along the avenue.