Coney Island Creek

Floating Island by Maggie Tobin

I moved to Brooklyn in 1991 from Nebraska. Having spent my entire life landlocked in the Midwest, it was thrilling to spend my early days in New York meandering the coastline. I didn’t have a job or friends to occupy my time so it seemed like an interesting way to pass the days. One day in March of ’91 as I trudged through the melting slush along the edge of Coney Island Creek, I spotted a corked green bottle with something in it. I brushed off the ice and mud and discovered a rolled up piece of aged paper inside. After plucking the cork out, I carefully removed the somewhat fragile piece of paper initially hoping it to be a map of a sunken treasure or the like. Instead, it was a drawing of a boat pulling an island of sorts behind it. Very curious. I had spotted the “barge island” about 30 yards away and figured some kooky person had tried unsuccessfully to float it but had abandoned ship when it didn’t work out. It didn’t seem that strange or significant at the time as I had come across so many interesting things on my coastal walks.

I liked the drawing and put it back in the bottle as a ” keeper” artifact for my little collection of goods. When I got home I decided it was frame-worthy and hung it on my wall.

Years passed and it became part of my home like a cat or an old book. I didn’t much look at it anymore but surely would have noticed had it gone missing.

In 2005 I had the wonderful pleasure of seeing the “Floating Island” dawdling about the tip of Manhattan not far from the base of the Brooklyn Bridge. I was unaware of this work by Robert Smithson as it was not brought to fruition (by others) until 32 years after his death. I came home and googled it and immediately discovered a very similar drawing to the one hanging on my wall. Unlike my drawing, it was signed, dated (1970), and had the NYC skyline as the backdrop. The mark, however, was practically identical. I decided to keep mum as I was afraid that the “estate” of Mr. Smithson might try and claim the drawing as their own.

With all due respect, the drawing is still hanging on my wall with several other little curiosities I have gathered over the years. I love this little drawing regardless of who made it.

Is it an actual Smithson or a well conceived prank? I don’t know. Recently I have had several people ask me “Why not authenticate it? If it is a Smithson, it is probably worth some money.” I lived with this drawing for almost 15 years before I had any clue that it might be anything more than what it is: a beautiful sketch of an unfulfilled dream. Its as though someone informed me that my child may have been switched at birth and that a DNA test could verify whether this child I have come to love is actually really mine or not. Would I love that child less if it was determined not to be? Or more if it was? I don’t know but I’d rather not find out. I have no intention of selling it so it doesn’t matter. If my children choose to someday (if it does happen to be real), so be it .

Is this a rock turned to gold or gold turned to rock?

For me, the question alone has become the elixir.

About the Contributor

Maggie Tobin was born in Omaha Nebraska. She is an artist, teacher, and community organizer in Brooklyn, NY where she has lived for the last 20 years. She has exhibited her work throughout the U.S., Mexico, and Italy.

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Monday, October 17th, 2011 Art in a bottle, Artists, Body of Water, Coney Island Creek, Maggie Tobin, Objects Comments Off

A Brief History of Coney Island Creek

In the 17th century, Coney Island Creek was a small waterway that ended near what is now Cropsey Avenue. It was then dug into a straight that connected Sheepshead Bay to Gravesend Bay, making Coney Island an actual island. Because it was unnavigable, there was talk of widening it into a canal for shipping, but that never happened—once the five boroughs consolidated in 1898, this area lost its economic importance so there was no reason to turn it into a major shipping area. The creek was broken up by landfills over the years, then, in the 1950s, filled in and closed off for the construction of Shore Parkway—today, it is the two remaining inlets at either end.

It seems fitting that Coney Island Creek, home to an improbable collection of ghost ships, a stranded submarine and other haunting nautical detritus, was once known as Gravesend Creek. Over the years, not only ships have wound up in this watery grave, but many souls as well. In 1900, two women, ejected from a trolley for refusing to pay their fare, were run over on the trestle above the Creek, and fell in, dead. Accident-prone excursionists, strangulation victims, capsized picnickers and the downtrodden elite alike met their ends here. In 1895, a bereft Calvert Vaux, designer of Central Park, went for a walk along the water and was later found floating. Was it accident or suicide? We’ll never know.

Coney Island Creek has been the site of not only ghostly, but earthly sordid activity, as well. During Prohibition, Rum Row was a flotilla of schooners sitting off shore from Atlantic City up to Martha’s Vineyard, full of liquor from Canada, the Caribbean and Europe. It was brought into the city by big time mafia bootleggers like Frank Castello, head of Luciano crime family, and Big Bill Dwyer, who owned, among other sports teams, the Brooklyn Dodgers football team and controlled all rum-running in New York. Frankie Yale—the Undertaker—who owned a Coney Island dive at the waters’ edge where Al Capone had his first job, assisted the rum runners and was later gunned down by a rival on Crospey Ave. Many small time operators made rum-runs, too, with the same boats they used for fishing expeditions, helping liquor disperse into Long Island before it ever made it to the rest of the city. In the 1920s, we could have stood on this shore and watched rum-runners speed by being chased by the Coast Guard or hijackers. › Continue reading

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Monday, April 25th, 2011 Coney Island Creek, STREAM No Comments

Mr. Loan Lost His Horse. He Lost His Companion Also, But She Was Found Again

The New York Times
Published: February 6, 1886

A man with a nose like an August sunset and cheeks like the roses that bloom in the Spring drove up to Kelly’s Hotel, on the Ocean Parkway Boulevard near the King’s Highway station on the Prospect Park and Coney Island Railroad, at midnight on Thursday and called for a drink. He gave his horse to the care of a stable boy and assisted a bundle of cloaks and scarfs and hoods to alight from the sleigh and walk into the hotel. In the parlor, when part of these numerous articles of wearing apparel had been laid on a chair, the bundle resolved itself into a young woman of prepossessing appearance with an affinity for hot lemonade. The man repeated his call for a drink several times with great success, for he soon got thawed out, and the crimson hue of his face gradually softened to the color of an underdone tenderloin of beef. Every time the wind whistled around the corner of the hotel he called for a drink, and on each occasion he took whiskey. He remarked casually that it was a cold night and that he needed something bracing. Before calling for a drink he invariably commented with a reckless increase of adjectives upon the abnormal condition of the weather. At the sixth drink it was the coldest night on record.

After a time the man took another drink, the woman concealed herself in many swathings of clothes, and the pair went forth into an atmosphere 8 degrees below zero. Relieved of the bustle and confusion incident to the call for drinks, the hotel drowsed back into its normal condition. An hour later the strange man, covered with snow from head to foot, walked into the hotel alone and called for a drink. He seemed stupefied, and to all appearances was under the influence of liquor.

“Where’s your horse and sleigh?” the bartender asked.

The man looked at him stupidly for a moment, and replied: “In Coney Island Creek, I guess.” › Continue reading

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Monday, April 25th, 2011 Coney Island Creek, STREAM No Comments

He Was Her Husband’s Friend

New York Times
Published: February 7, 1886

Mrs. Jennie Williams, of No. 205 Marcy-avenue, Brooklyn, who had such an unpleasant experience in Coney Island Creek on Thursday night in company with Mr. William Loan was seen at her home by a Times reporter yesterday. She introduced the reporter to a tall, broad-shouldered gentleman about 30 years of age, whom she said was her husband. He is in the same business as Mr. Loan and the two are friends. Her husband, Mrs. Williams explained, was not able to own a horse and sleigh, so when Mr. Loan asked her to take a drive he was perfectly willing to let her go. The lady felt hurt that some of the accounts of the story represented her as being divorced from her husband, which she denied.

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