Historic

Green Thumbing Through the Boyce Thompson Institute

The abandoned Boyce Thompson Institute in Yonkers.

In 1925, Dr. William Crocker spoke eloquently on the nature of botany: “The dependence of man upon plants is intimate and many sided.  No science is more fundamental to life and more immediately and multifariously practical than plant science.  We have here around us enough unsolved riddles to tax the best scientific genius for centuries to come.”

As the director of the Boyce Thompson Institute in Yonkers, Crocker was charged with leading teams of botanists, chemists, protozoologists, and entomologists in tackling the greatest mysteries of the botanical world, focusing on cures for plant diseases and tactics to increase agricultural yields.  The facility was opened in 1924 as the most well equipped botanical laboratory in the world, with a system of eight greenhouses and indoor facilities for “nature faking”—growing plants in artificial conditions with precise control over light, temperature, humidity, and carbon dioxide levels.

The sun sets on the greenhouses of the Boyce Thompson Institute.

The institution had been founded by Col. William Boyce Thompson, a wealthy mining mogul who became interested in the study of plants after witnessing starvation while being stationed in Russia, (although an alternate history claims he just loved his garden.)  Recognizing the rapid rate of population growth worldwide, he sought to establish a research facility with an eye toward increasing the world’s food supply, “to study why and how plants grow, why they languish or thrive, how their diseases may be conquered and how their development may be stimulated.”

By 1974, the Institute had gained an international reputation for its contributions to plant research, but was beginning to set its sights on a new building.  The location had originally been chosen due to its close proximity to Col. Thompson’s 67-room mansion Alder Manor, but property values had risen sharply as the area became widely developed.  Soaring air pollution in Yonkers enabled several important experiments at the institute, but hindered most.  With a dwindling endowment, the BTI moved to a new location at Cornell University in Ithaca, and continues to dedicate itself to quality research in plant science.

Most of the interiors had a near-complete lack of architectural ornament, but the entryway was built to impress.

The city purchased the property in 1999 hoping to establish an alternative school, but ended up putting the site on the market instead.  A developer attempted to buy it in 2005 with plans to knock down the historic structures and build a wellness center, prompting a landmarking effort that was eventually shot down by the city council.  The developer ultimately backed out, and the buildings were once again allowed to decay.  Last November, the City of Yonkers issued a request for proposals for the site, favoring adaptive reuse of the existing facilities.  Paperwork is due in January.

Until then, the grounds achieve a kind of poetic symmetry in warmer months, when wild vegetation consumes the empty greenhouses, encroaching on the ruins of this venerable botanical institute…

-Will Ellis

Ornate balusters made this staircase the most attractive area of the laboratory.

A central oculus leads to this mysterious pen in the attic.

This stone sphere had been the centerpiece of the back facade, until someone decided to push it down this staircase.  See its original location here.

The city gave up on keeping the place secured long ago.

The north wing had been gutted at some point.

An interesting phenomenon in the basement–a population of feral cats had stockpiled decades worth of food containers left by well-meaning cat lovers.

A view from the upstairs landing was mostly pastoral 75 years ago.

The main building connects to a network of intricate greenhouses.

The interiors were covered with shattered glass, but still enchanting.

For more abandoned places in Yonkers, check out the Glenwood Power Station:

The Yonkers Power Station

Landing at Floyd Bennett Field, New York’s First Airport

A dilapidated airplane hangar at Floyd Bennett Field.

Mrs. Bennett wept as the memorial tablet was unveiled, damping the freshly broken ground of New York City’s first municipal airport. For all time, Floyd Bennett Field would honor the legacy of her departed son, the Brooklyn native and national hero who’d won the Medal of Honor by breaking barriers as the first to fly over the North Pole.

Floyd may have made his mother proud that day, but historians have since determined that the feat was a fraud.  Perhaps he sold his soul for a ticker tape parade—the remaining two years of his life were fraught with failure, culminating in a dramatic end.  Bennett perished while attempting to save a shipwrecked crew on a deserted island.  Two months later, a deserted island was named for him. Perhaps it, too, was doomed to fail.

It was an unlikely upgrade for Barren Island, a plot of marshland in Southeast Brooklyn that had spent half a century as the final destination for New York City’s garbage.  An hour’s drive from City Hall, with no access to major highways or train routes, the location was heavily criticized by the growing aviation community, but financial concerns ultimately outweighed their objections.  Barren Island had one major advantage over the other proposed sites—the city already owned it.

Hangars on the south side of the property are a fine example of early aviation architecture, despite their state of disrepair.

Dredgers began pumping thousands of tons of sand from the depths of the Jamaica Bay to fill and level 500 acres.  Completed at a price of $4.5 million, Floyd Bennett Field was dedicated in 1931 with a spectacular air show, drawing crowds of 25,000. By all accounts, the airport was a fine one, with eight hangars capable of accommodating fifty planes, a state-of-the-art lighting system, and innovative accommodations for amphibious aircraft.

As the fanfares subsided, the airfield struggled to compete with New Jersey’s Newark airport, which dominated passenger flights into the New York City area.  At the time, carriers depended on airmail contracts with the US Post Office to ensure profits on underbooked flights, and the Postal Service never agreed to transfer its operations from Newark to Floyd Bennett Field.   Ultimately, the new airport could only attract a single commercial airline to its runways; American Airlines landed its first passenger flight in 1937.  As predicted, travelers complained of the long transit times into the city.

Despite its failings in the realm of commercial flight, Floyd Bennett Field was the site of dozens of notable achievements during the golden age of aviation. In 1933, Wiley Post made the first solo trip around the world, a record that was broken years later by Howard Hughes on the same spot. “Wrong Way” Corrigan made a memorable trip across the Atlantic in 1938, claiming he had accidentally gone the wrong direction after he was unable to get approval for the flight.

With the Second World War raging overseas, the Navy purchased the underused airstrip from the city in 1941. During the war, Naval Air Station – New York was the busiest installation of its kind in the United States. Aircraft Delivery Units positioned at Floyd Bennett Field were responsible for the commission, testing, and delivery of aircraft to combat zones throughout Europe and the Pacific.  The field was reorganized in 1946 as a Naval Air Reserve Training Station.  As the military scaled back operations in the 1970s, most of the airfield’s military functions were phased out, and the vast majority of the property was abandoned.

Dilapidated artifacts in an old Navy barracks.

Three conflicting plans emerged from the local, state, and federal governments on how to repurpose the newly available land, but the winning bid came from the Nixon administration, which proposed including the site in the nation’s first attempt at an urban National Park. The Gateway National Recreation Area included 1,300 acres of waterfront parkland scattered through broad areas of the Rockaways, South Brooklyn, Staten Island, and New Jersey, largely composed of defunct military posts.  At the time, critics accused the Gateway proponents of creating a “vast wasteland.”  To some extent, these words proved prophetic. The Gateway area is currently the largest contiguous open space in New York City, but relatively few New Yorkers have ever heard of it.

As of 1991, daily visitors to Floyd Bennett Field averaged around 30, and even today, the Gateway remains largely unknown. During the Reagan years, the area was allowed to languish when the Parks Service was set back by a series of budget cuts. A 2003 bid to connect the areas with ferry links and rebrand the Gateway as the “National Parks of New York Harbor” failed to raise the private funds necessary to overhaul the parks.  Meanwhile many of the area’s military structures—there’s over 400 scattered throughout the Gateway—have fallen into a state of disrepair.

This former repair shop has been completely neglected.

For a place where relatively little happens, Floyd Bennett Field seems to be in a perpetual state of emergency—police cars and rescue vehicles are a constant presence, and choppers often loom overhead. The NYPD operates its helicopter division and runs Emergency Service training here. Pockets of civilian activity are scattered throughout the park, including Brooklyn’s largest community garden. In Hangar B, a group of enthusiastic craftsmen are preserving the airfield’s history by restoring and displaying historic aircraft. On summer nights, the park is a meeting place for amateur astronomers, offering some of the darkest skies in the five boroughs. Notably, it’s the only legal campground within city limits.

The recent restoration of the Administration Building, now a visitor’s center, is a significant sign of progress.  Several buildings have been cleared out and renovated, but there’s still much work to be done.  Recently, a $38 million sports and entertainment center salvaged four of the historic hangars, combining them into a single structure.  Beyond the packed parking lot of the Aviator Sports complex, the crowds drop off quickly, leading to a sea of grass and vast stretches of empty pavement.

The sparsely populated acreage of Floyd Bennett Field can feel deserted at times, but you’re more likely to strike up a conversation here than the teeming walkways of Central Park; visitors invariably have something in common. They’re birdwatchers, dog walkers, cook-out captains, and retirees who all share a love of the outdoors and an appreciation for quiet places.  Most importantly, they all know about this place, and cherish the secret.  Floyd Bennett Field is due for a rebirth, and it’s just waiting to be discovered. Until then, let’s enjoy the silence…

These hangars have been cleared out somewhat recently.

The renovated administration building looking lonely on a foggy morning.

Feral cats roam the old airport, choosing the most remote places to die.

A desiccated feline makes a tomb of a former officer’s quarters, where piles of animal waste collect in the bathtub and cover the stairs.

These rooms are only touched with the first signs of decay, but the windows are already shuttered with ivy.

The later buildings typify the blandly pragmatic architecture of military installations of this period, but inside, the right angles break down.

Odd lighting in a projection booth overlooking a gymnatorium.

This building on the southwest edge of the park was last used by the park police.

I almost missed this incredible camera obscura…

An undistorted view of the projected image.

-Will Ellis

For more abandoned military installations, check out Fort Totten:

Click through for more of New York’s military past.

Wreaking Havoc in the Staten Island Farm Colony

These dormitories are the Farm Colony’s oldest structures.

At the center of Staten Island lies a bucolic expanse of ancient forest, a city-owned amalgam of parks, scout camps, and overgrown lots collectively termed the Greenbelt. It’s an area known for its natural beauty, its murders, and its ruins—on the southern rim, off Brielle Avenue, there’s not one but two historic hospitals that are crumbling to oblivion. The grounds of Sea View Hospital and the New York City Farm Colony may be the most forgotten quarter of the forgotten borough, representing New Yorks’ highest concentration of derelict buildings, with over two dozen scattered through 300 acres of mostly wooded land.

What’s left of the Farm Colony only comes out in the winter—from May to November, thick greenery conceals the battered rubblestone facades of its twelve remaining structures—over forty years of neglect, trees have reclaimed the grounds.  The forest bends when the wind gusts, groaning like a legion of creaky doors.  In areas that had once been cleared for farmland, thorns amass in undulating hillocks, hooking and scoring the flesh of any who dare to trudge through the overgrowth.  Some of the vines have adhered to the ruins of the oldest buildings, whose interiors have almost completely collapsed, leaving only a tangle of splintered beams and nail-studded boards. If you peek through the window of one of these wrecks, there’s a German Expressionist nightmare of canted doorways and lurching walls.

These dormitories replaced the charmless farmhouses of the Richmond County Poor Farm, which had operated on the spot since 1829 to house and rehabilitate New York City’s aging poor.  By the time Staten Island was incorporated as a borough of New York City, the Poor Farm was renamed the Farm Colony.  With distinctive gambrel roofs modeled in the Dutch Colonial Style, the buildings constructed in this period were designed to evoke the ease of rural living, avoiding an institutional design to reflect changing attitudes in the treatment of the poor.

In colonial times, poverty was equated with deviancy, and the care of dependents was traditionally left to the Church, but by the 19th Century, governments across the United States began constructing state-run institutions to house the poor, infirm, mentally ill, and developmentally disabled.  This was the era of the farm colonies, when able-bodied inmates were expected to work in exchange for their room and board.

200 residents could grow enough vegetables to feed 3,000, which was more than enough to share with other institutions across the city, including City Hospital on Blackwell’s Island.  With the construction of several new dormitories in the 30s, the population quickly expanded to over 1,000, and started to exhibit a perplexing problem.  As early as 1910, 75% of the residents were over 50, a quarter over 70, and the majority were unfit for manual labor.

Light sneaks through a boarded window into the close quarters of a former inmate dormitory.

By 1925, farm work was no longer mandatory, but many residents enjoyed the perks of voluntary farming and maintenance jobs.  Tokens could be exchanged for tobacco, pipes, and candy, and those who worked got first priority in the dining hall.  Anecdotes from the simple lives of this isolated community scatter the archives of the New York Times.  Heated horseshoe rivalries, band performances, and handicraft sales were among the most prominent events of a life lived at the Farm Colony.

The Farm Colony was in many ways idyllic, but not without its controversies.  Like all institutions in this period, the facility was guilty of overcrowding at times.  In 1934, a hospitals commissioner was shocked to discover that many of the Colony’s 200 employees were habitually intoxicated, resulting in the resignation of the superintendent and his second in command.  By the 1950s, the facility had become a geriatric hospital.  The second half of the 20th Century marked a steady decline in residency.  Increased prosperity nationwide and the introduction of social security further depleted the population, and the property was abandoned in 1975.

Though the area was designated a historic district in 1985, next to nothing has been done to protect the buildings.  Thought to be hazardous to children playing at a nearby ballfield, a morgue was demolished in 1999, ruffling the feathers of the borough’s preservationists.  The city has been trying to drum up interest in the site over the last decade, briefly considering it as the site of a new police academy, and shortlisting the Farm Colony as a possible location for a school of engineering, but they’ve repeatedly been unable to attract an interested party.  City council member James Oddo, who called the Farm Colony the “bane of his existence”, made another appeal in 2012 for expressions of interest.  Lack of access to mass transit may be partially to blame for the lack of response.  As another piece of Staten Island’s architectural legacy falls to its knees, it serves as a reminder that a bureaucratic designation is less than half the battle.

The gambrel roofs of the older buildings hearken back to a period long before their hundred year history.

Generations of vandalism have eviscerated the interiors of the Farm Colony’s remaining buildings.  Inside, little has been left to catch the eye.  Floors are strewn with rubble.  Plaster dust accrues in drifts, exposing a patchwork of masonry.  Wintry details complement the desolation—a broken windowpane bearded with icicles, hallways inundated with frozen pools.  Juvenile graffiti covers every surface, except on the ground floors, where the building has been sealed off with cinderblocks in an unsuccessful attempt to keep out intruders.  These corridors are intensely, eerily dark, and all but untraveled.  Featherweight vines dangle from the ceilings of the blackest chambers like some alien weed.  A single breath seems to cloud these rooms with fog, otherwise they’re empty.  To find any artifacts one must head underground.  Barely visible in the basement gloom, piles of old laundry bloom with mold, chairs are devoured by rust.

A dank basement room carpeted with coils of wire.

The Farm Colony may be decrepit, but don’t call it desolate.  Even with temperatures below freezing, the grounds experience a weekend rush.  If you plan to visit, be prepared to dodge a few paintballs, it’s one of the most popular pastimes here at the Colony. (Visitors have equipped the grounds with an elaborate field of obstacles pilfered from the buildings.)  Elsewhere, the grounds are littered with all the tokens of a high school hangout.  Beer cans, cigarette stubs, and junk food wrappers pave the walkways.  At night, these lanes are crowded with teenagers, who’ve come to escape their parents and affirm their friendships by way of getting scared.  Fearing boredom above all, they enter the Greenbelt ruins in spite of the warning of a cautionary tale.

Legends of a serial killer called Cropsey have spread through this part of Staten Island for as long as anyone can remember; it’s a fiction intwined with truth.  The land surrounding the Farm Colony is haunted by a history of real-life horrors, starting in the 1920s with the abduction and murder of a seven-year-old boy, who some had seen walking into the woods with an elderly man on the day of his disappearance. (The crime prompted an investigation of Farm Colony residents and staff, but nothing turned up that could implicate anyone in the crime.)

Later, sinister abuses at the nearby Willowbrook State School for the developmentally disabled cast a pall over the area.  Andre Rand, a former orderly at the facility, is thought to be responsible for a series of child murders that shocked the borough in the 70s and 80s.  Rumor has it he lived in the tunnels under the abandoned hospital, and it’s confirmed that he set up camp on the grounds.  In 1987, the body of Jennifer Shweiger was found buried in a shallow grave not far from his campsite.  Most of Willowbrook was renovated and incorporated into the College of Staten Island in the 1990s.  In the intervening years, the Farm Colony has taken its place in the collective imagination as the site most associated with the Cropsey legend.

The Farm Colony has never been open to the public, but that hasn’t stopped it from becoming a shared space.  Though some would call it useless, ugly, or appalling, the youth of Staten Island has somehow endowed this place with meaning and mystique.  Its value is written in the dust, just count the footprints.  Through fogbanked mornings, orange autumns, and torrid summer nights, the Colony beckons—a wilderness in which to be wild, a victim to bear our destructive instincts, a place to harbor our fears, and face them.

The sun sets on the Farm Colony.

Graffiti in the dining hall…

…and a devastated hallway on the top floor.

The gate left open to the laundry and industrial building.

Inside the cavernous industrial building, another popular spot for graffiti.

The unadorned Nurses Residence, once the insane pavilion, sits across from the paintball area.

Inside one of the four H-shaped dormitories, a staircase landing strewn with rubble.

Light leaks in a dark chamber.

Can you identify these vines (or roots) growing in a pitch black basement room?

What appears to be a former laundry room, the floor is covered with moldy slippers, blankets, and clothes.

The last room standing in the three oldest dormitories is on the verge of collapse.

For a closer look at the legends surrounding the Farm Colony and the case of Andre Rand, watch the documentary Cropsey, available on Netflix.

For more on New York City’s abandoned institutions, check out Letchworth Village:

Legend Tripping in Letchworth Village

The Trapps Mountain Hamlet, Backwoods Ghost Town

A night at the 87 Motel in New Paltz.

If you’re like me, city living can wear you down—sooner or later, you’re itching for the woods again.  The sleepy college town of New Paltz offers a cheap motel and a short proximity to Mohonk Preserve, 5,000 acres of hiking trails, swimming holes, and rock scrambles nestled deep in the ancient Palisades.  The world-worn hills of the Shawangunk Ridge evoke a pleasing sense of permanence to the weary New Yorker, it’s a lifetime away from the teeming avenues of Manhattan.  Time seems to stand still around here, but out in these tall timbers, the ruins of a 19th century ghost town hint at a lost way of life.

The area is known for its landmark luxury resort, the Mohonk Mountain House, which has been run by the same family since it opened in 1869.  True to its Quaker roots, the hotel originally banned liquor, dancing, and card playing; until 2006, it couldn’t claim a bar, and you still won’t find a TV or radio in any of the $700 a night lodgings.  It may sound old-fashioned, but it’s part of a tradition in these parts—since they were first settled in the late 1700s, things have always been behind the times.

The Fowler Burial Ground.

Before the age of mountain tourism, a small subsistence community lived off this land, growing what little food the thin, rocky soil could support, raising a handful of livestock, drinking from the Coxing and Peter’s Kills.  They scraped a living carving millstone out of native rock, shaving barrel hoops, and harvesting tree bark for leather tanning.  In the summer, women and children joined in harvesting huckleberries, a seasonal cash crop in wild abundance at the time.

With a peak population of forty or fifty families, the settlement included a hotel, a store, a chapel, and a one room schoolhouse.  Despite this progress, the population held to its old ways.  So hopelessly and wonderfully at odds with the changing values of the outside world, this oldfangled hamlet didn’t stand a chance.

Starting in the late 1800s, advances in technology gradually replaced the small trades of the Trapps.  Unable to sell their traditional wares, settlers found work in neighboring resorts, including the Mohonk Mountain House, building hotels and maintaining trails and carriage roads. In the late 20s, the construction of Route 44 created a short term boom in the town’s employment, but eventually led to its decline.

Many sold their property to resort owners and headed to nearby villages to find a better way of life, but one man called Eli Van Leuven stayed behind, living in a tiny plank house without running water or electricity until his death in 1956.

The Van Leuven Cabin has been lovingly restored, an unassuming monument to a largely forgotten community.  Aside from this, the humble industries of the two score families that resided here have left little to mark them but shallow depressions in the ground, rubble stacked in odd arrangements, and leaf-littered tombstones.  Only a settlement so bound to the earth could disappear so completely.

On the drive home, the first sighting of the Manhattan skyline elicits a kind of dull horror, signaling the inevitable return to a concrete-bound existence.  As I’m plunged back into the 21st century, the scene is at once overstimulating and shockingly mundane.  In that moment, I’d take an axe and a cool morning in a mountain hamlet over any day in the ad-plastered streets of midtown, but the daydreams invariably dissolve.  Out of habit, obligation, or common sense, I’ll forget the plank house for the brownstone, the Coxing Kill for the coffee shop, as the stony ruins of a mountain town blanket themselves in moss.

-Will Ellis

The Clearwater Ruins are some of the best preserved.

Former site of the Enderly House, most structures incorporated Native American techniques into their construction.

Unfinished work in the millstone quarry.

Path to the Van Leuven Cabin.

The fully restored cabin, constructed in 1889, is occasionally open for tour groups.

This road was built in large part by Trapps Hamlet residents.  Today, it glides through the heart of the ghost town.

Route 44, the road to ruins.

This boundary wall was used to delineate the property of Benjamin Fowler, who owned 150 acres for farming, livestock, and family use.

Many of Benjamin’s young children are buried in this forest plot. This grave for his son William is the earliest, dating to 1866.

The motel pond by night.

Stadium proportions of a New Paltz grocery, a far cry from the corner bodega.

At Split Rock swimming hole.

Climbing to the top of Bonticou Crag.

In the nearby Minnewaska State Park, the Awosting Falls swells from a mid-August downpour.

Related Links:

• The Mohonk Preserve
• New York Times—”Makeover at Mohonk”
• The Trapps Mountain Hamlet Historic District
• The 87 Motel

For more abandoned places in the rural Hudson River Valley, see:

Legend Tripping in Letchworth Village

Inside Fort Totten Part 2: The Army Hospital

A tin ceiling crumbles in an Army Hospital dayroom.

Constructed in 1906, the Fort Totten Army Hospital has been vacant since the area was decommissioned as a military base in the mid 70s.  Today, this once thriving infirmary with a 68-bed capacity exhibits a harrowing level of decay.  Beneath an attractive Colonial Revival facade, hospital rooms self-destruct in slow motion.

Originally known as the Post Hospital, and later named after Dr. Walter Reed, the medical center is situated on a scenic bank of the Long Island Sound on the southeast portion of Willet’s Point, in an area currently under the jurisdiction of the NYC Fire Department.  A newly renovated training facility, which once served the military as a barracks and mess hall, sits directly behind the hospital, a prime example of the potential for adaptive reuse of the installation’s vast collection of dilapidated buildings.

Most are in a state of limbo, awaiting a white knight to cough up the millions necessary to preserve and repurpose the structures, but unfortunately, Walter Reed Hospital is long past the point of no return.

Inside, a nearly complete lack of artifacts disappoints, but allows the structural degeneration to take center stage.  Watch your step—some doorways give way to a two-story chasm, filled with jagged debris and splintered beams.  Buckling walls, bulging floors, and collapsed light fixtures mingle in the wretched sea-foam green interior.  Its a preservationist’s worst nightmare, but it only scratches the surface of Fort Totten’s decay.

With a third of the property somewhat maintained by the Parks Department, the grounds are currently open to the public.  It’s worth the trip to see this moribund military base while most of its history remains (precariously) intact.  With some of the last remaining open spaces in Queens, this little known park makes a perfect picnic spot, but I wouldn’t sit too close to its ill-fated infirmary—Fort Totten Army Hospital is falling down. 

(For more on the past, present, and future of Fort Totten, see Part 1.)

-Will Ellis

Related Links:

• Fort Totten Historic District Designation Report
• Fort Totten History from the Bayside Historical Society 
• NYTimes 1999 “Fort Totten’s Old Houses are Tottering”
• NYTimes 2003 “Nearer to a Fort Totten Park but Not to a Consensus”
• Scouting NY—A Snowy Day at Fort Totten

“Demolition by Neglect”

This 1926 kitchen annex was the hospital’s latest addition, but it’s one of the first areas to collapse.

A devastated room on the first floor.

Tread carefully.

Vines take root in a first floor bathroom.

Dangling fluorescent fixtures in Room 27.

A perilous corridor, with the basement visible through a hole in the floor.

One level down, the entrance to a supply room.

Even this small utility room was done in sea-foam green.

A chair left in the basement was one of the only remaining pieces of furniture.

A rag sways in the breeze from a basement window.

The attic, distinguished by angled ceilings and dormer windows.

Rotting walls on the fourth floor.

Someone wasn’t happy with their room number.

For more Queens abandonments, check out:

• Houdini’s Grave, in NYC’s Spookiest Cemetery

• Inside Creedmoor State Hospital’s Building 25

• The Rockaway Beach Branch, Queens’ Forgotten Railroad

  

  Click through for Part 1 of this post.

Inside Fort Totten: Part 1

An abandoned battery at Fort Totten

Fort Totten sits on a far-flung peninsula of the Long Island Sound, forming the Northeast corner of Queens.  The grounds of this defunct military installation turned underfunded public park are home to over 100 historic buildings representing a series of changes that have taken place over the area’s quiet 200 year history.  Unfortunately, the majority of these stuctures have been disused for decades, and many are in a state of progressive collapse.  With so much of Fort Totten closed off with caution tape, overtaken with vines, or hidden beneath rusty fences, it makes for an unconventional park, but a fascinating place to wander.

An 1829 farmhouse predating the land’s military use crumbles behind a weedy barricade; out front, a prominent sign bears the inscription: “Please Excuse My Appearance, I am a Candidate for Historical Preservation.”  It’s an image that typifies the current state of affairs in the Fort Totten Historic District.

On the northern tip of Willet’s Point, a monumental granite fortification constructed during the Civil War as a key component of the defense of the New York Harbor sits unoccupied, though it’s used as a haunted house on occasion.  Clustered on the rest of the grounds, dozens of dilapidated Romanesque Revival and Queen Anne Style officers’ quarters, hospitals, bakeries, movie theatres, and laboratories vie for restoration, but so far the funding has failed to materialize.

The Willet Farmhouse, Fort Totten’s oldest structure, and one of the most at risk.

One such building, a two-story YMCA facility built in 1926, has been abandoned for close to 20 years, but much of what’s left behind lies undisturbed.  On a bulletin board in an upstairs landing, a 1995 thank-you letter from a kindergarten class at PS 201 hangs by a crude depiction of Santa Claus, both lovingly dedicated to an Officer Rivera.  Steps away, in a rotting book room, an incongruous stash of 80s porno magazines.

Most recently used as a community relations unit of the New York City Police Department, the building is cluttered with mattresses, discarded packaging, and unopened toy donations.  The New York City Fire Department, which now operates training facilities in a renovation abutting the hospital building, currently uses the attached gymnasium as a storage space.  The basement was filled with rusted-through shelving and ruined equipment, flooded and too dark to shoot.

An overgrown pit in a World War I battery.

On the other side of the peninsula, a series of concrete batteries sit half-submerged in plant life.  These were constructed at the turn of the century, but by 1938, they were declared obsolete and subsequently abandoned.  The boxy design looks like modern architecture to me, but the battery reveals its true age in other ways.

Pencil-thin stalactites ornament the ceiling wherever the rain gets in, suspended over a crank-operated machine designed to lift heavy weaponry a century ago.  The network of maze-like tunnels feature arched hallways with metal doors, winding staircases, and yawning pits, all fit for a dungeon.  Guards stationed at the fort were laid off in 2009, and it was unclear on my visit if the area was open to the public or not.  A rusty barrier, more hole than fence, didn’t keep out a couple of high school kids, but offered a spot for them to park their bikes.

When the military base changed hands in 2005 and became an official New York City Park, Bloomberg predicted that Fort Totten was ”certain to become one of New York’s most popular parks.”  Some community members feared that the estimated 450,000 yearly visitors would disrupt parking, increase crime, and change the face of the neighborhood, but ten years later, tourism has yet to pose a problem.

Fort Totten hasn’t lived up to its potential just yet, but the progress that has been made gives hope for improvements to come.  The park now offers regular events and educational programs to draw visitors and enrich the surrounding community.  Several nonprofit groups have occupied and renovated the decrepit buildings, including the landmarked Officers’ Club, which now serves the Bayside Historical Society as an educational facility and exhibition and event space.  These are small but significant victories in the effort to save the historic legacy of a little-known plot that could be the crown jewel of Queens parkland.

(Though in some cases, it may be too little, too late.  One look inside the profoundly decayed Fort Totten Army Hospital, in Part 2 of this post, will assure you of that.)

-Will Ellis

Related Links:

• Fort Totten Historic District Designation Report
• Fort Totten History from the Bayside Historical Society 
• NYTimes 1999 “Fort Totten’s Old Houses are Tottering”
• NYTimes 2003 “Nearer to a Fort Totten Park but Not to a Consensus”
• Scouting NY—A Snowy Day at Fort Totten

This obscure Queens park doubles as a ghost town.

The YMCA building partially obscured by monstrous vegetation. On the left, a new renovation.

Inside, a rusty scale abandoned in the lobby.

An emptied snack bar once served concessions at sporting events and amateur theatre.

A community kitchenette still held pots, pans, and complete place settings.

A bulletin board on the second floor that hadn’t been updated in 17 years.

This room must have provided temporary housing to minors.  The floor was littered with clothing and old English projects.

In the opposite corner, a derelict dollhouse. If I had been in the Twilight Zone, I’d have found a miniature me in there.

The remains of a rotting book room, which also housed a store of nudie magazines.

Through the library, a crumbling projection room overlooking the YMCA gymnatorium.

Daylight spills onto the practical planes of an underground battery.

Other areas had vaulted ceilings and arched double doors.

The interiors were almost completely empty, except for a dusting of dirt and leaf litter.

Some rooms held a few remnants…

Like this one: 100-year-old machinery in a dark Fort Totten nook.

Queens is quickly becoming my favorite borough.  Check out:

• Houdini’s Grave, in NYC’s Spookiest Cemetery

• Inside Creedmoor State Hospital’s Building 25

• The Rockaway Beach Branch, Queens’ Forgotten Railroad

Click through for Part Two: The Fort Totten Army Hospital

The Harlem Renaissance Ballroom

Inside The Harlem Renaissance Ballroom

The dance floor of the Harlem Renaissance Ballroom sprouts mushrooms today, but 80 years ago it quaked with the frenzied rhythms of the Lindy Hop.

The Ballroom was completed in 1924 as part of a larger entertainment hub that included a bustling casino and 900-seat theatre.  Built and operated by black businessmen, the “Rennie” was the only upscale reception hall available to African Americans at the time.  Prize fights, concerts, dance marathons, film screenings, and stage acts were held at the Renaissance, along with elegant parties and meetings of the most influential social clubs and political organizations in Harlem.  The community’s elite gathered to dance the Charleston and the Black Bottom to live entertainment by the most renowned jazz musicians of the age.

The nightspot even played host to the nation’s first all-black professional basketball team, also called the Harlem Renaissance, considered by some to be the best in the world in their day.  On game nights, portable hoops were erected on the dance floor, converting the ballroom into a stadium.  Following each game, almost invariably a victory for the Rens, a dance was held where players would mingle and jive with the choicest ladies of Harlem.  The team barnstormed in towns across the country, playing exhibition games in which coveted matches with white teams drew the largest crowds.  In their best season, the Renns set a record with 88 consecutive wins that has yet to be broken.

View of the ballroom’s ruined interior from the bandstand.

A year before construction on the ballroom was completed, the institution that would one day demolish the Renaissance Casino moved in next door.  The Abyssinian Baptist Church was once the largest Protestant congregation in the country, and continues to prosper today, both as a religious institution and a driving force of change in the surrounding neighborhood.  Established in 1989, its nonprofit arm, the Abyssinian Development Corporation, has invested over $500 million in community development, becoming the most influential social service and housing provider in Harlem.

The corporation currently rents all of its 1,200 units of housing to low-income families, is responsible for constructing Harlem’s first new high school in 50 years, and has attracted numerous supermarkets, department stores, and national retail chains to aid in the development of the neighborhood.   Despite their success, Abyssinian’s dealings have brought controversy in recent years.  Many of their low-income tenants accuse the organization of neglect, pointing to hundreds of standing violations in their residential buildings.  Their vision of the “New Harlem” seems at odds with some long-term community members, who call their “progress” gentrification.

The ADC purchased the Renaissance property in 1991 with plans to renovate the site back to its historical role as a social hall and community space.   In the intervening years, they introduced a new plan that diverges sharply from their traditional housing ventures.  While a portion of the property will be utilized as a community center, only 20% of the residential units will be “affordable,” the rest of the 19-story construction will be set aside for luxury condominiums.  In a Times quote, Executive Director Sheena Wright cites the necessity of bringing “diverse income levels” to the neighborhood as justification for the project; she asserts, convincingly, that “one should not relegate Harlem to housing just for the poor.”

The first stage of development involves the demolition of the theatre structure.  Plans call for the preservation of the ballroom’s facade, but the interior is coming down.  The project almost hit a roadblock in 2006 when the structure was pegged for a Landmarks Commission review, but the ADC exerted its political muscle to block the designation, enlisting big name supporters like former Mayor Dave Dinkins, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, and the New York Landmarks Conservancy to voice their opposition.  In the five years that have passed since the ADC overcame this obstacle, a bleak economic climate has forced them to put the project on hold.  Abyssinian is currently pursuing investors for the project.

A spotlight falls on the ballroom once again.

The site of the former theatre is now an empty lot harboring a few disused construction vehicles, but contrary to some reports, the Renaissance Ballroom still stands, for now.

Most of the windows are boarded up, but light finds its way through a caved-in ceiling, exposing the diaphanous remnants of a golden age—colored light bulbs still lodged in the nightclub’s chandeliers, seat numbers pinned in the balcony.  Ghostly images of jazz singers and blasting trombones barely cling to the proscenium of the ballroom’s weathered stage, once graced by Duke Ellington, Count Basie, and Ella Fitzgerald.  The sense of history here is palpable, and the deterioration absolute.  Reduced to mulch, the dance floor supports a thriving green fungal colony.  Little points to the existence of a casino on the lower floor, but a coatroom remains largely intact.  The rest gives the impression of a war zone—feral cats tread freely over piles of rubble that once delineated rooms.  It’s easy to see why Spike Lee used this location as a nightmare crack den in Jungle Fever.

Langston Hughes had the Rennie in mind when he described ”a golden girl, in a golden gown, in a melody night, in Harlem town.”  It’s been decades since the “mellow magic of dancing sound” has reverberated here, but the Ballroom remains significant through its connection to the cultural and intellectual movement it nurtured.

• NY Times—”Powerful Harlem Church is Also a Powerful Harlem Developer”
• NY Times—”A Harlem Landmark in All but Name”
• The Uptowner—”Rennie Rots as Recession Hits Abyssinian”
• Harlem One Stop—”Renaissance Ballroom and Casino”
• YouTube—”Taj Mahal” scene in Jungle Fever, shot on location in the Ballroom

The floor of the ballroom was significantly decayed.

One of the larger mushroom patches.

Can you spot the face beaming on these faded signs?

Box seats in the balcony of the Harlem Renaissance Ballroom.

Another view from the stage.

Walls collapse in the downstairs lobby.

A dark hallway on the first floor.

The Coat Room

Inside The Domino Sugar Refinery

Inside the abandoned Domino Sugar Refinery’s cavernous raw sugar warehouse.

Situated on an eleven-acre parcel of waterfront in the shadow of the Williamsburg Bridge, the derelict Domino Sugar Refinery remains one of the most recognized monuments of Brooklyn’s rapidly disappearing industrial past. Now, after a decade of false starts, new plans for a modern, mixed use megacomplex may put an end to the decaying colossus that was once the largest refinery in the world, marking the final passage of a working-class Williamsburg.

In the late 19th century, Brooklyn was responsible for over half of the country’s sugar production, with Havemeyers & Elders Sugar Company leading the pack of over 20 major refineries that called the borough home. The factory’s signature building—a towering redbrick structure that still stands today—was constructed in 1884 to replace an older sugarhouse that had been destroyed in a catastrophic fire. Three years later, 17 of the largest sugar refiners in the U.S. merged to form the Sugar Refineries Co. Trust, later reorganized as the American Sugar Refining Co., and branded as Domino Sugar in 1902. Domino and its predecessors operated on the waterfront for a total of 148 years; at its peak, the site employed over 5,000 workers, capable of producing over three million pounds of processed sugar a day.

The American Sugar Refinery Processing House shown after its completion in the 1880s.

With the growing use of high fructose corn syrup and artificial sweeteners came a steady decline in demand for old-fashioned cane sugar. Production at the Williamsburg plant ended in the early 2000s with partial packaging operations lingering until 2004. The non-profit Community Preservation Corporation purchased the Domino site the same year for $58 million. Their plan would preserve and renovate the central refinery building, landmarked in 2007, and raise a battalion of architecturally offensive residential high-rises in the footprint of the surrounding industrial complex, razing the Raw Sugar Warehouse, constructed in 1927, and the Packaging House, a 1962 addition, in the process.

The old “New Domino” complex.

Two Trees teamed up with noted NYC firm SHoP Architects—the group is already leaving a lasting impression on the city landscape with the Barclay’s Center and the East River Esplanade.  Unveiled Friday, their monumental plans seem tailor-made to appease the new population of Williamsburg, without limiting profits.

The plan is similar in scope to the vision of the CPC, with several key improvements. The buildings rise higher—up to 60 stories—to allow for more park space, including a one-acre “Domino Square,” where builders envision film screenings and outdoor concerts. Some of the structures include open spaces and sky bridges, an innovative solution sought to preserve harbor views for the inland community. The landmarked refinery building would be preserved and converted to office space, and several pieces of machinery would be salvaged for inclusion in a public “artifact walk.” In the face of such monumental changes, this may be of some consolation to New York nostalgics.

The new rendering.

Developers are working with the YMCA to establish a community space on the site, and are also proposing a new public school. Street level retail would favor independent business over chain store tenants. Two Trees also intends to deliver on the previous developer’s promise of 660 units of “affordable” housing, though the condition was never legally binding.

With all these benefits, Two Trees is attempting to pacify a community that is weary of change, and concerned for its future. The Domino development marks a clear and dramatic manifestation of a contentious transition that’s been taking place in Williamsburg for the last decade.  The area is well known today as an infamous haven for hipster youth, but 10 years ago the neighborhood was a quiet, working-class community of Jewish, eastern European, and Hispanic immigrants. Now, it won’t be long before the tattooed and the trendy are priced out, leaving room for only the wealthiest New Yorkers. Emerging across formerly affordable areas of Manhattan and Brooklyn, the familiar pattern is destined to change the face of our city.  Call it progress or gentrification. Praise the plans, or lament the loss, there’s no stopping the reckless growth of New York City.

Eerie interiors of the abandoned packaging plant.

In its final moments, the Domino Sugar Refinery slips further into a speedy decay, introducing an element of the exotic to an already unfamiliar environment. Some of the alien interiors are coated with shallow puddles of tar, or dark sugar byproducts rendered the consistency of glue, or apple crisp. Others take on the appearance of an Egyptian temple in the impenetrable darkness, with row upon row of columns supporting the chasm of a vacant warehouse. Tinged aquamarine, the peeling factory floors of the packaging plant might be confused for the barnacled mechanisms of a sunken ship.  The complex is unnervingly immense, presenting a seemingly endless series of floors connected by lightless, labyrinthine staircases. Alone in a factory that once employed thousands, up against its unfathomable depths, it felt like being in the belly of the whale—it didn’t take a miracle to get me out of there.

The next time you ride down the FDR or traverse the Williamsburg Bridge, take a good look at the sprawling industrial giant that was the Domino Sugar Refinery; it won’t be long before it’s preened and polished into the marketably modern new New Domino—another of the city’s rough edges, smoothed over in favor of gleaming glass.

A storage room in the soon to be demolished packaging house.

A dilapidated loading bay in the Domino Sugar Refinery.

This locker room looked like something out of a horror movie.

A smaller (women’s?) locker room.

Machinery in the colossal Raw Sugar Warehouse.

An eyewash station.

The factory interior.

Another view of the packaging plant.

An emptied office overlooking the East River.

This warehouse was pitch black to the naked eye.

Evening light streaks through a painted window.

This handtruck might have sat untouched for a decade.

A view of the complex from the rood of the packaging plant.

The landmarked refinery building as it stands today.

A Last Look Inside a Demolished Staten Island Castle

The recently demolished “S.I. Castle”

For 120 years, a castle with many names loomed over the quiet nabe of New Brighton, Staten Island.  Perched on a 6 acre hilltop covered with dead creeping vines, the “S. I. Castle,” officially the Frost Memorial Tower of the old Samuel R. Smith Infirmary, which was later renamed Staten Island Hospital, appears to be the quintessential haunted house.  You mightn’t expect its history as a flourishing charity-driven hospital for the underprivledged and a point of pride for the Staten Island community.

The stately Infirmary in its youth.

Today, the empty rubble-strewn lot lingers as a symbol of lost history, and lost hope, for members of the Preservation League of Staten Island and their supporters, whose generations of passionate and repeated efforts to save the building, and promote its designation as a New York City Landmark, have fallen on the deaf ears of the Landmarks Preservation Commission.  Unannounced, the city demolished the striking Romanesque Revival structure in early March, asserting that the building was in a state of “progressive collapse.”

Touring the Smith Infirmary only 4 weeks before its fateful demolition, I can say that the decision was warranted.  Through 33 years of abandonment, the degraded walls, slumping ceilings, and precarious floors of the infirmary became an appealing canvas for graffiti artists, a haven for squatters, drug addicts, and arsonists, and ultimately, a neighborhood hazard.

Crossing paths with an unassuming homeless man hauling a large piece of lumber, I made my way through the weedy, brick-covered lot to a shuttering board on the west side of the building.  The smell of mold and rot permeated the ravaged interior.  Wind blustered through its second floor landing, causing boards and debris to smack and rattle at odd intervals.  As one of the last people to set foot inside the Frost Memorial Tower, I witnessed a shameful record of neglect that calls into question the value and mission of the Landmarks Preservation Commission.  These pictures document the dying breaths of a squandered architectural and historical treasure.  Rest in pieces, S.I. Castle.

• NY Times 1983—“Pride of the Island” Facing an Uncertain Future
• SI Live—Wreckers make short work of Staten Island’s “Castle”
• SI Advance—“Too far gone”

Light leaks into the devastated interior of the Staten Island Hospital.

Second floor stairwell of the Smith Infirmary.

A band of sunlight illuminates a doorway to ghostly effect.

A relatively well-preserved staircase stands out among the ruins.

Vaulted ceilings distinguish the preserved half of the top floor…

…The other half recently collapsed.

Light curves around the wall of one of the Infirmary’s four iconic towers.