If you heard lots of thunder-like sounds in the NYC area tonight (and even Upstate NY too), this is why.
New York was celebrating the quadricentennial of Henry Hudson discovering New York City. Yep, about 400 years ago, Henry Hudson sailed along parts of what is now the Hudson River and helped support the first settlers in the area.
UPDATE: Ok, I stand corrected. The fireworks I heard last night were for the Hoboken Italian Festival. However, the video above is for the quadricentennial fireworks.
Just north of the city of Poughkeepsie in New York on the Hudson River is a massive rehabilitation and construction project that is on schedule to be completed by October 3, 2009. The project is called Walkway Over The Hudson and it takes the former Poughkeepsie Bridge and turns it into the world’s longest pedestrian and bicycling bridge.
Anyway, it’s a bit far from the city, but I would love to go there and just stand on the bridge especially with Fall colors coming up. I’m keeping October 3 on my calendar.
Of all of the years that I’ve lived in New York City, I have never once heard about Riverbank State Park, a sizable recreational park located above the North River Water Pollution Control Plant. For the first time today, I went there and it is such a great place! There’s a lot of basketball courts, tennis courts, a full-size oval track, a baseball field, and a good amount of open space that you would not think to find in the middle of Manhattan.
I didn’t see it, but according to the New York State Parks website, Riverbank State Park also houses an Olympic-size swimming pool that is housed under 5 separate buildings! Getting to Riverbank State Park is quite wonderful too because you have to travel across this pedestrian bridge which puts you right over the West Side Highway (and over the Amtrak train tracks that lead into the Freedom Tunnel).
It’s a nice place to sit and get a view of the Hudson River, so if you’re in the area (around 138th Street or 145th Street), I recommend you check it out if you haven’t already.
llustration by Mark Nerys with photos by Matt Hoyle
Kottke shared a link from New York Magazine about some of the stuff that’s hidden beneath the Hudson River. It’s a pretty fantastic list if you believe everything on it (although there’s really no reason not to believe it all). It turns out that all of those rumors I always hear about how filthy the Hudson is are in fact almost all true! One of the disgusting facts is this:
When there’s a rainstorm, far more water goes into our drainage system than sewage-treatment plants can handle. So the overflow pipes open wide, and all our wastewater—including the untreated effluvia of 8 million people—goes straight into the ocean. The day after a storm, the harbor is brown and thick with stirred-up silt that is shot through with human waste. Sometimes you can see shreds of toilet paper. When divers emerge from the harbor on those days, their suits have to be scrubbed down with bleach or kerosene before the men can strip them off.
So raw sewage just goes straight in there! Also, according to the map above, all of the dark red spots are places where the water is 5 feet deep or less, meaning most adults can stand upright in them without drowning. I didn’t know it was so shallow in so many places.
The building is absolutely grand in scale. It’s built by the same people as Grand Central Terminal in New York City but obviously for a different purpose. It’s a shame that the building has been left to rot. And although I love that this place is abandoned, I wouldn’t mind seeing it restored to what it looked like in its heyday.
Brandon and I went to explore the Glenwood Power Plant today along the Hudson River.
It was one of the coolest places I’ve ever been to (Freedom Tunnel included). I have lots of great photos to go through and I’ll upload them all soon. But for now, here’s a quick shot of Brandon and I climbing up the smokestack. Let me just say that it was wonderful and very, very tall.
