Posts tagged Dead Horse Bay
Knuckle-Deep Figurine by Hugo J. Quizhpi

OBJECT: Mermaid Figurine

BODY OF WATER: Dead Horse Bay

 

Tonight I walked

to where the sea topples

onto the bay.

 

Knuckle-deep in murky waters,

                          a porcelain figurine  

 reclined

              in an ebbing tide.

 

Across its eroding surface,

sparkling minerals

juxtaposed

against its hollow navel.

 

A licked finger

                                        swabbed in the air

reveals the brokenness between

porcelain and flesh

 

is palpable, perhaps relatable,

but only at arm’s length

and in small occasional doses.

 


Hugo J. Quizhpi was born and raised in NYC.  He served in the US Air Force Reserves, where he received recognition for duties rendered during 9/11 and Operation Iraqi Freedom.  His work is inspired by his experiences in the military and his indigenous Ecuadorian roots.  His work has been published in Elohi Gadugi Journal, The Author's Voice, and in WLRN Public Radio.

A Brief History of Dead Horse Bay

Dead Horse Bay marks the site of what once was Barren Island. What is now Floyd Bennett Airfield used to be watery marshland separating a series of small islands from mainland Brooklyn–Barren Island was the largest. Its name comes from a corruption of the Dutch word for bear–only much later did the English meaning of the term come to apply.

From the 1850s until the last residents were evicted in 1936, Barren Island was a community built on trash, home to dozens of factories and rendering plants. At its height during WWI, it took in all of the household trash of Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Bronx, and the daily remains of all five borough’s animal dead. This refuse was sorted and rendered and converted to major profits as glycerin, fertilizer and glue by a community of immigrants–mostly Polish, Italian and Irish, with a small population of blacks–who lived on the island and worked its factories. Tasks were sorted according to social rank, with black families getting the worst job, converting daily tons of dead fish to fertilizer. Second to that was the job of rag-pickers, who used their bare hands to feel for and sort out valuable fabric from the garbage; comparatively less horrifying were the jobs of sorting bone and scavenging metal and paper. The smell from the island was so intense that at one point a group on mainland Brooklyn calling itself the Anti-Barren Island League held considerable sway in city politics, continually proposing legislation to close down the island or somehow curb the stench.

Residents of Barren Island were completely separated from mainstream life in the city, and their daily reality was as distinct as if it were another country: at the turn of the last century, the island had no electricity, no post office, no doctors or nurses, four saloons, five factories boiling vats of garbage day and night, and a one-room schoolhouse. School let out early so children could help their parents sort garbage. After 91 other teachers turned the post down, in 1918, “Lady Jane,” “the Angel of Barren Island,” came to teach. She lived in downtown Brooklyn, and taught children and families in Barren Island piano, dance, etc.

In that same year, the city stopped sending garbage there, and all but one factory, a horse rendering plant, closed. Chemical compounds were replacing natural materials for cleaning and the automobile had cut way down on the number of horses needed, and therefore dying, in the city. In 1926, the waters around Barren Island were filled in with garbage, sand and coal to make what’s now Floyd Bennett Field. In 1936, Robert Moses ordered evacuation of residents to build Marine Park Bridge, the island’s cottages were bulldozed and everyone was scattered. In the 1950s, a cap on one of the landfills burst, littering Dead Horse Bay with eras of waste, which continually washes ashore here.

Urban explorers are drawn to Dead Horse Bay because the trash that litters its shores–toys, shoes, bottles and bones–gives them glimpses into the everyday of New Yorkers of decades past. But, not everything that washes up there is quite so “everyday.” In 1830, the pirate Charles Gibbs ran his (pirated) ship aground on a sandbar near Rockaway point after murdering the captain and first mate, a crime for which he was later sentenced to the death and hung. Before he was captured, though, Gibbs and his cohorts made it to shore on Barren Island, where they are said to have buried $50,000 worth of gold coins. Legends dispute where the treasure was buried and what was its fate. But, in 1986, treasure hunters were tantalized when a gold coin was found along the southern shore.

Please peruse Underwater New York to find work inspired by the many strange objects that have turned up on the shores of Dead Horse Bay!

Sources: 

FYI, New York TimesAll The Dead Horses, New York TimesAtlas Obscura

A Barren Island Mystery: An Amateur Photographer's Peril--Was it An Attempt at Murder?

The New York Times

Published: July 29, 1886

Ex-Alderman Nicholas R. O’Connor, of this city, is interested in many enterprises, chief among which is a gaslight company which illuminates the greater part of New Jersey. Besides being a member of the Union Club, Secretary of a lawn tennis society, and the leader of the german in Harlem, he is an amateur photographer, second only in skill to the son of Mr. Arnold, of Arnold, Constable & Co. The ex-Alderman last year had made for him at great expense a gorgeous pair of knickerbockers, or knee breeches. McCarthy, the tailor, told him that with the upper part of his lower limbs incased in these knickerbockers he would create a flutter among the gentler sex at the seaside. The ex-Alderman observed that he was married, and the subject was dropped. He went to Fire Island for a few days’ recreation, and, while promenading on the beach, was attacked by a party of fisherman who afterward declared that they thought they had clubbed the life out of a new kind of sea serpent. When the ex-Alderman recovered from his injuries he swore a mighty oath that he would never again wear the knickerbockers, and he gave them to his wife, telling her to sell them to the old clo’ man.

A few weeks ago the ex-Alderman was seized with the amateur photography mania, and purchased an expensive camera and other apparatus. He rushed out to Pike County, Penn., and took views of all the wild scenery in that picturesque country. He photographed farmers, their wives and children, and returned to this city rejoicing. He presented the photographs to his neighbors, and they are asking themselves the question, “What did we ever do to Nick O’Connor?”

On Friday evening, the regular monthly meeting of the Bacon and Cabbage Club was held in its clubroome in Park-place, and Major P.M. Haverty presided. After the pig’s head and bacon and cabbage had disappeared, and the only beverage—hot whiskey—allowed to be served in the clubroome had been liberally passed around, ex-Alderman O’Connor opened a large trunk and produced his camera, saying that he would take views of the members of the club in various groups by electric light. The temperature of the room was about 140°, but no member was allowed to put ice in the hot whiskey, and it is against the rules of the club for any member to use a fan or other cooling machine. The ex-Alderman took several very satisfactory views, and the club members voted that copies should be sent to the various charitable institutions. The members learned with deep regret that the ex-alderman intended to spend the remainder of the season at Fire Island catching instantaneous views of passing steamers. McCarthy, the tailor, persuaded him to again wear knickerbockers, and the ex-Alderman consented. All of Tuesday night a force of tailors were at work making the knickerbockers, and early yesterday morning they were sent to the ex-Alderman.

Last evening the ex-Alderman appeared at his office in Park-place. He walked lame and told a strange story. He said that yesterday morning, upon the invitation of a relative of his old friend, Police Justice Andrew Jackson White, he went to Barren Island. He had heard of Barren Island before, but had never visited it. He had an idea that it was a charming and picturesque spot if its name meant anything. He wore his knickerbockers and carried his photographic apparatus with him; also a special permit from the President of the Bacon and Cabbage Club to carry a fan. When he neared the island he was certain that he was not approaching a bed of roses. He saw some buildings which looked like factories of some kind, and when he landed he wished he was at his home in Harlem. He determined, however, not to lose the opportunity to gather some views and aimed his camera at a building which he was told was Justice White’s Summer residence. He was hard at work when, he says, a shot was fired at him. He shrieked, “Murder!” “Police!” at the top of his voice and aroused the natives. Search was made for the would-be murderer, but he was not discovered. Blood trickled from a spot on the calf of the ex-Alderman’s left leg. The surgeons of the Barren Island Hospital examined the wound and gave it as their opinion that it was the work of a mosquito. They actually laughed over it. Ex-Alderman O’Connor was highly indignant. He said that he not only heard the shot, but saw a man with a gun, and felt the wound in his left leg all at the same time. He was certain that an attempt to murder him had been made. His wound was dressed last night by Tailor McCarthy, who was a surgeon in the army, and the ex-Alderman was conveyed to his home in a carriage. He will go to Fire Island as soon as he recovers from his injuries. He is thankful that he escaped from Barren Island with his camera, and promises to do great work at Fire Island.

This article was presented as a theatrical reading by actor Mark Emerson Smith at the Brooklyn gallery Proteus Gowanus’s show Transport III with Underwater New York on July 8, 2010.