In preparation for the opening of the new Brooklyn Navy Yard Center at Building 92 on Veterans Day, we will be posting on the blog, Facebook, and Twitter all about the rich maritime history of the borough, city, and state, so stay tuned and come visit the Brooklyn Navy Yard!

As part of the ceremonies marking the 10th anniversary of the attacks of September 11, 2001, the USS New York sailed into New York Harbor as a floating memorial to the victims. Commissioned in 2009 and built using steel recovered from the World Trade Center site, the ship was carrying several family members of fallen first responders when it arrived for the commemoration ceremonies at Ground Zero. When the ship first visited New York City two years ago, it was opened to the public, and we got the chance to go aboard and explore the massive amphibious transport. The USS New York is an impressive tribute, but it is just one in a long line of fighting ships to bear the name. Earlier this summer, we learned about the first American vessel so named, at the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum in Vergennes, Vermont. In an earlier post, we discussed the lineage of the moniker, which includes a battleship constructed at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, but the name actually dates all the way back to America’s first fleet, built during the Revolutionary War. But our visit to the museum gave us a more complete history of the vessel, as we saw surviving portions of the ship and experienced what it may have been like to serve aboard the first USS New York.

I had earlier described the ship as “little more than a large canoe.” The ship would be dwarfed by its modern incarnation (seen above), but a large canoe it is not – perhaps a very, very large rowboat would be a better description. The exact dimensions of the vessel are unknown, but we do know those of one of its sister ships, the USS Philadelphia – at 53 feet long, 15 feet wide, and with a compliment of 45 men and three guns, these ships were impressive sights in the relatively narrow confines of Lake Champlain, and their flat bottoms made them ideal for negotiating the shallows of inland waters.

Lake Champlain was a critical artery during the American Revolution. It was part of a corridor connecting British forces in Quebec with the Hudson Valley and New York City, and if the British gained command of it, they could cut off New England and divide the restive colonies in two. In the summer of 1776, the Americans were forced to abandon their invasion of Canada, a campaign that had begun the previous fall. Inadequate supplies, disease, low morale, and a massive British force poised to strike from Quebec City convinced the American commanders it was better to quit their positions at Montreal and Sorel and retreat to the relative safety of the forts on Champlain.

During the course of their retreat from Canada, the Americans destroyed or captured any vessel the British could use to pursue them, and anything they would need to rebuild their fleet, including shipyards and sawmills. This severely stalled the British advance, giving the Americans time to build a fleet capable of facing their enemy. Benedict Arnold, who had commanded American forces in Montreal, was tasked with building the fleet at Skenesborough (now Whitehall), New York, on the lake’s southern tip.

By September, 16 ships were patrolling the lake, awaiting the British advance. During this time, most of the ships were constantly “at sea,” not moored at the forts. This was in part because the British invasion could come at any time, but also because the ships were manned by inexperienced crews, mostly militiamen with little training. Arnold feared that they would desert once they realized how grueling it was to row these vessels – that was their primary locomotion, not sails – so he kept the men aboard for weeks at a time, resupplying them by canoes, constantly drilling and preparing them for battle.

It was not until October 11, 1776 that the fleets finally engaged, and the Americans were immediately overmatched. The largest British vessels proved ungainly on the lake, but the British firepower was still too much, and several American vessels were quickly lost. During the course of the battle, one of the New York’s three cannons exploded, killing Lieutenant Thomas Rogers and, and according to Arnold’s account, causing her to lose “all her officers except her Captain.” By nightfall, the American fleet was hemmed into a narrow channel between the New York shore and Valcour Island (see map below) on the northern half of the lake. But rather than close the noose, the British left an opening in their line along the New York shore, allowing the Americans to escape at daybreak. The British pursued southward, and Arnold was forced to scuttle several more ships and escape overland to the forts at Crown Point and Ticonderoga (we recently paid a visit to another historic fort nearby, Fort William Henry on Lake George – view our pictures).

Despite the defeat, the battle convinced the British that a campaign in the Champlain Valley so late in the season was ill-advised. And despite the explosion, the New York was the only American gunboat to survive the battle. But the following year, British forces commanded by Gen. John Burgoyne would quickly sweep through the valley, capturing the American forts along the way – the New York was stationed at Ticonderoga when it fell in July of 1777, at which point it disappears from the historical record. (This Champlain campaign would also end unsuccessfully for the British, when Burgoyne was forced to surrender at Saratoga, a major turning point in the war.) In 1910, the ship’s stem (pictured above) was unearthed while digging a canal in Whitehall, though how it got there is still a mystery. The cannon that exploded was recovered only recently thanks to the Valcour Bay Research Project, which has been conducting archaeological and archival research to reconstruct the battle. Both the stem and the cannon fragments are on display at the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum.

Though she did not survive the battle, the Philadelphia has had a longer life than any other vessel in that ill-fated fleet. She remained well preserved on the lake bottom, and in 1935 she was raised and reconstructed. The ship is currently on display at the Smithsonian in Washington, DC. But if you want a more up-close look at what it may have been like the live, work, and fight aboard the ship, you can get that chance on the Philadelphia II, a replica of the gunboat that still prowls the lake from its dock at the Maritime Museum.

This story may be far removed from the Brooklyn Navy Yard and the waterways of New York City, but these events marked the birth of the American Navy. Today the latest incarnation of the New York may patrol the world’s oceans to protect America’s interests, but 235 years ago, America’s fate rested on a fleet of rowboats on a narrow lake in the wilderness.

Urban Oyster Co-Founder Dave Naczycz has been posting reports from the Great American Beer Festival in Denver, Colorado:
Intro | Day 1 | Day 2

One of the new components of this year’s GABF was a focus on sustainability, both for the conference and for the brewing industry.  GABF teamed up with Zero Hero, Ecosyste.ms, A1 Organics, and the Colorado Carbon Fund to take a number of steps to green the conference.  Here are some highlights:

• Divert 70% of waste from landfill at this year’s GABF
• Offset 33.70 metric tons of CO2 emissions
• Disposable items at GABF will be recyclable or compostable.  Water cups, plates and utensils are compostable.  As always, the beer tasting glass is reusable.
• All glass and plastic bottles, cans, paper and cardboard will be recycled
• Comprehensive pre- and post-festival recycling program
• The use of styrofoam at food outlets in the event has been banned
• Bulk condiments will be used at concession areas
• All compost will be processed by A1 Organics, located in Platteville, CO. This is a permitted commercial composting facility and will mix GABF compost with other food waste, animal waste, yard waste and wood chips. Within 90 days this compost will become a rich soil amendment.
• GABF will be part of the Green Meetings Industry Council’s goal to divert one million tons of trash from the landfill

In addition to these steps, there was a large section in the conference devoted to the conference’s sustainability efforts as well as efforts by the brewing industry as a whole.  The area was divided up into different areas of sustainability, including water, waste, carbon and social responsibility.  Each section contained information on what was being done by the conference, what was being done by the industry and what you could do as an individual to affect those areas.  There was also a great custom-built keg delivery bike that I think could have a future in New York City.  Again, I’ll be doing a follow-up article on sustainability in the beer industry in the coming month, so we’ll be revisiting a lot of what was talked about at GABF.  Though it was pretty significant to see such a large amount of floor space committed to the topic. 

My first GABF was an amazing experience where, in addition to tasting lots of delicious beer and food, I learned a great deal about the industry, brewers, and the beer that is out there.  That said, there were some things about the festival that I didn’t think were positive either for the festival or the industry. 

First, the GABF has spent its entire 30 years in Colorado; first in Boulder and later in Denver.  This event has amazing potential to raise the visibility of craft beer nationwide and to generate millions of new customers and aficionados.  Having the festival in Denver every year is like preaching to the converted.  Denver is a place where craft beer is ubiquitous.  Everyone drinks it and it is found in every restaurant and bar.  I don’t have any city specific figures, but my guess is that while only about 6% of the beer consumed nationwide is craft beer, the figure is much closer to 30% for Denver as a city.  I urge the Brewers Association to take this party on the road.  It would do wonders for the industry.

Second, and this is related to the first issue in my mind, the GABF in Denver has increasingly become a drinking party.  It got worse as the festival continued, but there were hordes of people there on every night that didn’t seem to care at all about craft beer.  They had only one goal in mind, and that was to get trashed.  Now, far be it for me to begrudge people a good time; however, I just don’t think it serves the craft beer industry to have a majority of attendees to its biggest festival getting plastered.  Craft beer’s true advantage over mass produced beer is that it is not something you chug.  It’s a fine food to be savored and appreciated.  I’m not saying that people shouldn’t have fun; I just think it was over the top at this year’s festival, and that was a sentiment I heard over and over.  In fact, many of the brewers avoid the weekend days or stay away from the event entirely for this very reason.   I think a lot of this could be solved by taking the event on the road, since I think one contributing factor is that a lot of Denverites are used to going to this event, and it has become an annual party for them.

Finally, the volunteers, of which there are over 3,000, should not be the ones that people are meeting at these booths.  Most breweries did not staff their tables with brewery people who were knowledgeable about the beer and the brewery.  I understand that many small brewers don’t have the staff to spare, but then they should at least have a way of training the volunteers.  The volunteers I spoke with knew nothing about the beer they were pouring or about the brewery they were representing.  Most were placed at a table just minutes before the festival opened.   This just reinforces that this is too much a drinking event and not enough an informational and educational one. 

Aside from those issues, this remains a great event.  It’s the only time you are going to see that many breweries in one room and be able to try that much great beer.  The food and beer pairing events were phenomenal, and the efforts at sustainability for the conference were inspiring.  I do recommend going to at least one GABF in your life if you are at all interested in beer. 

Last but not least, one of the purposes of the GABF is to have a competition for US brewers.  This year that competition awarded 278 medals in 87 catagories.  New York State produced three medalists and our sole Gold Medal winner was Ommegang for their Witte in the Belgian Witbier category.   You can check out the full list of winners here.
Read Dave's other blog posts from GABF:
Intro | Day 1 | Day 2

Stay tuned for our last blog post about our experience at GABF tomorrow.  For questions or comments about this blog post, please contact Andrew Gustafson or leave a comment. If you would like to follow this blog, subscribe to our RSS feed or sign up for the Urban Oyster email newsletter. All photos courtsey Dave Naczycz.

Urban Oyster Co-Founder Dave Naczycz has been posting reports from the Great American Beer Festival in Denver, Colorado:
Intro | Day 1 | Day 3

So, day 2 turned out to be all about the growing focus on beer and food and how the line between the two is blurring, as many brewers are getting into food and vice versa.  The day started off with a press luncheon featuring different beers from around the country paired with several dishes.  The meal was delicious as was the beer.  I’ll share the menu with you here:

Welcome Beer:  (Yes there was a welcome beer.  Perks of going as press)
Taps Fish House & Brewery (Brea, CA) – Belgian White

Salad:
Roasted Carpaccio Beet Salad with Fennel, Green Apples, Goat Cheese, and Bacon served with Vinaigrette
Paired with: 
Chuckanut Brewery and Kitchen (Bellingham, WA) – Vienna Lager
McKenzie Brew House (Malvern, PA) – Saison Vautour

Main:
Grains of Paradise Seared Lamb Loin, Ginger Forbidden Rice with Apricots and Cranberries
Paired with:
Nebraska Brewing Co. (Papillion, NE) – Melange A Trois
Devils Backbone Brewing Co. (Roseland, VA) – Danzig

Dessert:
Pumpkin Bread Pudding topped with Ska Ten Pin Porter Caramel Sauce and Lefthand ESB Ice Cream
Paired with:
Barley Brown’s Brew Pub (Baker City, OR) – Turmoil
Rock Bottom Breweries (La Jolla, CA) – Moonlight

American Artisan Cheese Plate:
Point Reyes Farmstead Cheese Company  – Original Blue and Toma
Beecher’s Handmade Cheese – Flagsheep,
Cowgirl Creamery – Mt. Tam
Paired with:
Pagosa Brewing Co. (Pagosa Springs, CO) – Pagosa Pale
Fat Head’s Brewery &  Saloon (North Olmstead, OH) – Head Hunter IPA
Freetail Brewing Co. (San Antonio, TX) – Bandito

So needless to say this meal was amazing.  All of the food was delicious as was the beer.  The lamb was some of the best I have ever had, and the Grains of Paradise really added a lot.  For those that don’t know or don’t watch Sam Adams commercials, Grains of Paradise is a historic brewing spice that you can still find today in some beers.  The pairings sometimes worked and sometimes didn’t.  There was some grumbling about that among the assembled press corps, but I always feel that food and beer pairing is not an exact science, and part of the magic are the unexpected successes.  I felt the best pairing of the meal was the McKenzie Brew House Saison Vatour with the salad.  The tart fruitiness of the Saison helped to highlight some of the bright flavors of the salad.  It really made the salad come alive.  Alternatively I didn’t think the Vienna Lager did anything for the salad, but it was still a fine beer. 

After the luncheon we headed out for a tour of local Colorado breweries.  Perhaps the highlight of that trip was a stop at Strange Brewing Co., which is a new brewery in Denver located in the middle of an industrial area where you would never think to find a brewery.  Think Brooklyn Brewery circa 1996, except in an industrial strip mall.  It is a tiny brewery with a bar in front and a three-barrel system in the rear.  Yes, three barrels – and even that small capacity is due to a recent expansion.  The brewery was reminiscent of the early days of craft brewing due to the fact that much of their equipment was either custom-built or repurposed dairy equipment.  Their mash tun was an old dairy separator, and two of their fermenting tanks had been hand built.  These were all hand-me-downs from older breweries that had once used them to get started; so in effect, this is the first generation of craft brewers, all grown up, supporting the second-generation siblings.  We tried their 7 Barrel Saison, the Fresh Hopped Pale Ale, and their Cherry Bomb, which was created due to a mistake in their attempt to brew a normal cherry beer.  They lost a lot of water to evaporation when adding the cherries, and the resulting brew was quite a bit stronger than they had planned on.  However, it was so popular that they keep making it.  All three beers were delicious, and I recommend a trip to the brewery if you are ever in Denver.

The bus then went on to LoHi Tap & Burger.  This is a bar and grill that prides itself on excellent food and a great beer selection.  We enjoyed pairings with Oskar Blues HGH (I’ll talk more about this later) and Odell Brewing  Mercenary (DIPA) and their Bourbon Barrel Stout.  Pairings included meat sticks (kind of like jerky) made from meat direct from the Oskar Blues farm.  The beers were delicious, as was the food, though by this time my stomach was starting to rebel.  Finally, we were dropped off at Wynkoop Brewery in Denver, which was founded by the current governor of Colorado, John Hickenlooper.  They were hosting Pints for Prostates, which is a fundraiser for prostate research, and a couple dozen breweries were there pouring rare beer from their collections.  I tried a couple, but at this point I was past the point of being able to appreciate either food or beer.  So I quickly retreated back to a hotel to rest and get ready for the night session. 

The food and beer did not let up in the evening.  It was relentless.   First, I had a ticket to visit the special Farm to Table pavilion, where breweries had teamed up with chefs from around the country to offer spectacular food and beer pairings using local, straight-from-the-farm ingredients.  The first table I visited was our own Brooklyn Brewery, whose Garrett Oliver is widely considered the preeminent expert on food and beer pairing.  They were pouring their latest batch of Brooklyner Weisse and the Black Chocolate Stout and pairing it with a cheesecake topped with barley sauce and a barley tiramisu prepared by Patrick Sheerin of the Signature Room in Chicago.  The beer was of course delicious, but I had my doubts about the food and wasn’t sure that a barley tiramisu would be that great.  However, it was absolutely delicious with a rich caramel flavor that went very well with the Weisse.  Another highlight was the Three Floyds Brewing table that teamed up with another Sheering, Mike of the The Trencherman in Chicago, to offer their Moloko Milk Stout with a Lamb Bacon.  I thought I had died and gone to some sort of food and beer heaven.  The rich creamy stout joined forces with a tender and savory strip of lamb bacon to produce perfection.  The things I do for this company. 

The rest of the night was food and beer marathon where I had to tear myself away from the Farm to Table pavilion, which was easily the best part of this year’s GABF, and attend a couple of presentations.  The first featured Garrett Oliver along with other brewing luminaries as they discussed the lack of quality beer scholarship when compared to wine.  The second featured former Top Chef Winner Stephanie izzard teaming up with Goose Island Brewery on a food and beer pairing.  This session was a bit of disappointment.  The beer and the food were not that great, and the presenters seemed to be having fun amusing each other rather than explaining what they were doing. 

Luckily the third session made up nicely for that, as it featured Oskar Blues.  Most people know Oskar Blues from their popular canned beer, Dale’s Pale Ale.  They were the first craft brewery to can beer back in 2002, and now well over 100 breweries are canning beer.  The brewer owns a brewpub, has recently purchased a farm and is now taking the merger between beer and food to its next logical step by creating a complete cycle between brewery, farm, and restaurant.  The session illustrated this by pairing vegetables and beef raised on the farm (using spent grain and grey water from the brewery) with their HGH Double Dry Hopped Strong Ale.  The HGH is made with hops grown on their farm so that everything we tasted in the session had been growing on the farm just a few weeks ago.  The dish was amazing, and the beer was also spectacular.  Sustainable, locally produced food and beer are big topics on Urban Oyster’s tours and I have been inspired by my experiences at the festival to produce a more detailed post about different practices around the country being used by brewers to enhance the sustainability of their production.  That post will be coming in the next month or so.

By the end of day 2, my stomach and liver were both maxed out and I went to bed happy and very, very full.

Read Dave's other blog posts from GABF: Intro | Day 1 | Day 3

Stay tuned for our last blog post about our experience at GABF tomorrow.  For questions or comments about this blog post, please contact Andrew Gustafson or leave a comment. If you would like to follow this blog, subscribe to our RSS feed or sign up for the Urban Oyster email newsletter. All photos courtsey Dave Naczycz.

Over the three days, Urban Oyster Co-Founder Dave Naczycz will be posting reports from the Great American Beer Festival in Denver, Colorado. Here's the second of his dispatches:
Intro | Day 2 | Day 3

Wow! Never before have so many brewers been gathered in one place, and the effect was a little overwhelming. Thousands were gathered outside the doors of the Denver Convention Center anticipating the opening of the festival at 5:30pm. When the doors did open there was a cheer so loud you thought you were at a Broncos game, not a beer festival. Since the festival sold 49,000 tickets in just a few days, one could infer that it has become just as popular as the NFL.

I grabbed my tasting glass and headed into the melee. The festival is arranged geographically with brewers from different regions like the Midwest, Mid-Atlantic, and Rocky Mountains grouped together. I quickly breezed by the Mid-Atlantic section, which included New York City, to see who had come to the Festival. The only NYC brewery in attendance was Brooklyn Brewery, and they were slammed. Brewmaster Garrett Oliver along with other Brooklyn Brewery folks, including our friends Erin and Carla, were pouring Brooklyn Local 1, Local 2, Black Ops, and Sorachi Ace. Garrett was also signing copies of his new book, The Oxford Companion to Beer. It was great to see that they were clearly one of the most popular breweries at the festival along with Dogfish Head, New Belgium, Sierra Nevada, and others.

However, I can always get Brooklyn Brewery beer, so I headed over to the Mountain West section to drink local. I tried beers from Red Rock Brewing from Salt Lake City. I had their Black Lager, Helles, and Zwickel Lager. They specialize in the lager style and in lighter beers in terms of body and alcohol. One of the reasons they have those beers is due to the liquor laws in Utah, which state that a draft beer can’t be higher than 4% alcohol by volume. That is fairly low for the craft beer world, but it does create the opportunity to fill a niche that I think is neglected by many craft brewers, which is lighter, lower alcohol beers that many would find more drinkable than the imperial stouts and IPAs that dominate the industry.

I slid over to Renegade Brewing Company of Denver, which opened a mere three months ago. They were featuring a Rye IPA called Ryeteous! Local New Yorkers will no doubt recognize the resemblance to our own Sixpoint Craft Ales Righteous Rye. While the Renegade Brewing version was very good, it wasn’t nearly as well done as the Sixpoint version. Sixpoint had a more balanced hop profile and a richer malt character that appealed to me more. However I wish the guys at Renegade good luck in growing their new brewery. They also made a Poblano Amber, which was an amber ale spiced with peppers. The spice was very prominent, and I felt like it was a beer that captured the local flavor of the food out here (I had Mexican for lunch).

Finally I stopped by the Great Divide Brewing Co. booth. Great Divide beers are available in NYC, and many of you may have tried them before. I had their Titan IPA and their Rumble IPA. The Titan was interesting in that it utilized Simcoe, Amarillo, and Centennial hops. Not a Cascade to be found. The flavor made it distinctive from both East and West Coast IPAs and made a strong case for the increasing local character of craft brewing. This was clearly and Mountain IPA. In my next post I’ll talk more about the “localness” of beer and how that is playing out in the beer industry. Oh, and before I leave Great Divide, they had an excellent Saison called Collette that was just the right amount of tartness. All of these beers are distributed in NYC, but you might have trouble finding Collette as we are past the end of Saison season.

The last brewery I’ll mention is the Free State Brewing Company from Lawrence, Kansas. I visited them as a personal pilgrimage. This was the first craft beer I drank in my life. It happened in 1994 on a visit to a friend at the University of Kansas, and he took us to Free State which did, and still does, operate a brew pub in town. That experience changed my beer drinking life and set me on the path which has led to the beer tours and beer tastings that I now lead for Urban Oyster. I think that everyone probably has that “beer life changing” moment, and I always like to think that some have had it on an Urban Oyster tour. At Free State I tried their Ad Astra Ale, which was in all likelihood the beer I had 17 years ago, and it was a delicious, easy-drinking pale ale. Their C4 Imperial IPA was also very good. It was very hoppy, and the hops still dominated the beer, which was refreshing at that moment and somewhat unusual in the Imperial IPAs, where the maltiness is usually significant enough to balance with the hops.

After Free State I ran into Josh Shaffner who organizes New York Craft Beer Week, and he led me on a trek to numerous breweries where we were trying beer so fast I didn’t have time to take notes. This resulted in some end of the night fuzziness in the head, as I’m sure everyone can appreciate.

I’ll be back to you tomorrow with more news and brews from GABF 2011. If you are here at the festival, send us a tweet @urbanoyster and we can meet up to try some beer.

Read Dave's other blog posts from GABF: Intro | Day 2 | Day 3

For questions or comments about this blog post, please contact Andrew Gustafson or leave a comment. If you would like to follow this blog, subscribe to our RSS feed or sign up for the Urban Oyster email newsletter. All photos courtesy Dave Naczycz.

Over the next four days, Urban Oyster Co-Founder Dave Naczycz will be posting reports from the Great American Beer Festival in Denver, Colorado. Here's the first of his dispatches:
Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3

Today I’m flying out to Denver, Colorado for the 30th annual Great American Beer Festival, the largest gathering of craft brewers in the US.  We at Urban Oyster have really enjoyed becoming a part of the local craft beer community in New York City and introducing so many people to craft beer through our Brewed in Brooklyn Tour, Fermented NY Craft Beer Crawls, and our Craft Beer Cruises with Manhattan by Sail.  We feel that we’ve been a part of this revolution in beer that seems to be gaining more and more momentum with each passing year.  So we are headed out to Denver to learn even more about the industry, meet with brewers, talk shop, and probably toss back a few in the process.  In order to bring that experience back to you our readers I’ll be writing a post each day about my experiences at the festival, the people I’ve met, and the beer I’ve tried so that you too will be inspired to join the craft beer revolution (or if you already have, to at least go out and enjoy some local craft beer that day).

For those of you who have not been to a Great American Beer Fest (or have not even heard of it), it all started back in 1982 with just 800 attendees crammed into 5,000 square foot space.  30 years later, the festival has sold out at 49,000 attendees, and is held at Denver's 300,000 square foot convention center.  Back then, only a committed few were interested in craft beer, and the number of brewers operating across the country was near its historic low point, with fewer than 50 breweries nationwide.  The Beer Fest is hosted by the Brewers Association, which represents and promotes craft beer in the US.  By their count, there are now 1,790 breweries in the country – a number not seen since well before Prohibition – all but 50 of whom are defined as craft brewers.  We live in blessed times.  Other key stats about the festival include:

•    2,475 beers served in the festival hall, the largest selection of American beers ever served
•    466 breweries serving the beer (another record)
•    3,900+ beers will be judged in 83 different categories by 169 judges (yep, all records)

The festival will also feature a number of interest areas – I’ll be headed over to the Farm to Table Pavilion, where I’ll join chefs and small and independent brewers as they discuss and pair craft beer with dishes created with locally grown ingredients (anyone that has been to our beer tasting events knows that I have a passion for this topic).  Look for my post about that experience this Saturday.

We hope you enjoy this series and we look forward to your comments, stories and insights.

Read Dave's other blog posts from GABF: Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3

For questions or comments about this blog post, please contact Andrew Gustafson or leave a comment. If you would like to follow this blog, subscribe to our RSS feed or sign up for the Urban Oyster email newsletter.

This is the second installment of a two-part series exploring the impacts of the First World War on New York City's German community. Part 1

New York City is an interesting case by which to examine the experience of German-Americans during World War I, because it was both a center of pro-German activity and home to a large population of loyal, hard-working German-Americans. The city’s status as America’s media, industrial, and commercial capital meant that it attracted plenty of propagandists, saboteurs and spies. The unapologetically pro-German stance of many cultural elites, combined with the genuine threats to the city posed by German agents, made life difficult for average New Yorkers of German descent, who were for the most part well assimilated and deeply patriotic.

One measure of assimilation is the decline in membership in traditionally German-speaking churches. Most Holy Trinity in Williamsburg, Brooklyn’s oldest German Catholic church, saw its number of German-speaking parishioners fall by three-quarters between 1891 and 1908.[13] Today, this church stands as one of the most beautiful in Brooklyn, but then, as now, it was German in name only. Unlike in other parts of the country, there is little or no evidence of German religious institutions in New York being singled out for discrimination. The so-called “club” Germans had a tougher time, however; raids were frequent, and these groups were generally more outspoken and politically active. Some were even forcibly disbanded, like the German-American Alliance of Brooklyn, which was ordered dissolved by the state legislature in April 1918, “for the good of the country.”[14]

Most people coped with the situation by voluntarily downplaying their German identity and outwardly displaying their patriotism; this affected both religious and secular institutions. The Amityville Dominican Sisters, an order based at Most Holy Trinity, changed their official language from German to English,[15] and many singing societies began performing exclusively in English. One New York shooting society even offered its range in New Jersey for use by the US military when America entered the war.[16] New York City did not enact any language restrictions, but the board of education did ban all textbooks with favorable mentions of Kaiser Wilhelm. Due to their vociferous support of Germany during the neutrality period (and some even after), German-language newspapers were harangued by rivals and abandoned by readers. The press that had thrived in recent decades withered away, and across the country, the number of German papers fell by half between 1914 and 1919, and readership fell by two-thirds.[17]

A handful of streets and landmarks had their German names scrubbed (Brooklyn’s Wilson Avenue was once Hamburg Avenue, for example), but most name changes were done voluntarily.  The Deutsches Polyclinic on Second Avenue in the East Village, built in 1883, changed its name to the Stuyvesant Polyclinic during the war. Other health facilities, like the Germany Dispensary, founded in Manhattan in 1857, suddenly became the Lenox Hill Hospital in June 1918, and the German Hospital in Bushwick became Wyckoff Heights Hospital. Lincoln Savings Bank, which can still be seen on buildings around Brooklyn, was called German Savings Bank until 1918. One forcible effacement was on the US Customs House in Lower Manhattan, who’s facade features a pantheon of figures representing the great trading nations of the history. If you stand back far enough, you can see the figure of Germania holding a shield puzzlingly emblazoned with “Belgium”; "Germany" was chiseled over during the war as a snub to Belgium's occupiers.[18]

The lives of working people of German descent were deeply affected by the war. Employment in many places became contingent upon learning English, and employees that were “suspect” – either for their heritage or political views – were forced out in some cases. New York was of great strategic importance as an industrial center and port, and German U-boats left American coastal shipping extremely vulnerable, even in the protected confines of New York Harbor. As a result, nearly all people of German ancestry were removed from service on harbor craft, and 400 German nationals in New York when the US declared war, including 200 sailors, were interned at Ellis Island. They were soon transferred, as officials feared that their vantage point from the island provided useful information about American shipping that could be transmitted to the enemy.[19]

This suspicion even extended to all German citizens who lived or worked within sight of the water. In September 1917, the New York Times wrote, “It is estimated that there are about 1,000 German male subjects, above the age of 14, living along the Staten Island shore, while the number inhabiting the Brooklyn shore is estimated at three times as many.” That same month, the federal government issued a rule banning “enemy aliens” from residing within a half-mile of a fort, camp, aircraft station, arsenal or navy yard without a permit, nor could they own a firearm or operate a wireless device. Due to New York’s large German population and high population density, 70,000 such permits were issued in the city alone.[20]

German plots – real and imagined – were uncovered in the papers almost daily. Whether they were sabotaging Brooklyn sugar production[21] or poisoning America’s wheat crop,[22] spies were feared to be everywhere. Even the abandoned Atlantic Avenue Tunnel in downtown Brooklyn was rumored to be a hideout for German saboteurs. In 1918, a group of federal agents dug into the sealed tunnel – and found no spies. After they left, they apparently told no one where they had been, because the tunnel remained undisturbed – official records said the tunnel was demolished in 1861 – until 1980, when it was rediscovered by a young explorer (tours were offered of the tunnel until recently, when they were shut down by the city for safety concerns).[23]

Some of the changes to German-American society were temporary and superficial, but a lynchpin of German (and American) cultural life was also under attack: alcohol. Prohibition gained tremendous momentum during the war, and prohibitionists seized the political opportunities in vilifying all things German, especially their drinking culture in general and the beer barons who bankrolled many German-American civic and political institutions specifically. Though it did not come into force until 1920, the 18th Amendment to the Constitution – Prohibition – was submitted before Congress in December 1917, at the height of anti-German sentiment.

While previously the so-called “dry” movement had been able to tap into anti-immigrant feelings to paint saloons as un-American dens of vice, the outbreak of the war gave them the opportunity to draw a direct line between drinking and the barbarism of the German Empire. Not only did German culture produce the war raging in Europe, they argued, but alcohol sapped American strength, wasted American food, and kept Americans divided into disloyal ethnic enclaves. Saloons were even implicated in German espionage. As the Brooklyn Daily Eagle opined in December 1917, “The German spies and agents in this country have shown both their ingenuity and their daring in ‘this sort of warfare‘ waged upon us on our own borders. A saloon in the neighborhood of a factory gives excellent opportunities to approach workmen, to secure information from them or to bribe those who may prove bribable.”[24] Add to this the fact that the success of German brewers over the previous 50 years had put them in command of America’s alcohol market, but suddenly, the war made them vulnerable, and the drys had the chance to knock out alcohol for good (learn more about the history of the prohibitionist movement at the Westerville, OH Public Library's Anti-Saloon Archive).

Many Germans saw groups that wished to impose a puritanical, Anglo-Saxon vision of American society as antithetical to American values of freedom, and the prohibitionists (as well as the suffragettes) were the chief culprits. Brewers had been leading the fight against Prohibition for years, with limited success. They tried to market beer as a “temperance drink,” weaker and more nutritious than liquor. They financed newspapers and political organizations, such as the German-American Alliance, but as suspicion fell on these groups for their ties with the enemy, so too did it fall on the brewers. At the outbreak of the war, brewers tried to anglicize their products and image, but to little effect.[25] George Ehret, owner of New York’s Hell Gate Brewery and a naturalized American citizen, happened to be in Germany at the outbreak of the war, and found himself unable to return home. After America entered the war, his brewery, as well as his home and all his property, were seized by the federal government, under the newly-passed Trading with the Enemy Act. Ehret, along with other prominent brewers like Jacob Ruppert and Gustav Pabst, found themselves the targets of a Senate investigation for using the Alliance and the press to "fund enemy propaganda." They were completely vilified in the media, and ultimately the Alliance was disbanded.[26]

If anything, German drinking culture was less destructive than that of most native-born Americans. Beer gardens were open, sociable places where entire families could gather and enjoy beer alongside other wholesome amusements. Contrast this with the common saloon, which excluded women and children and offered few amenities beyond the usual vices. But even saloons were not what the drys made them out to be. As Michael Lerner points out in Dry Manhattan, “these saloons were not refuges where working-class ethnics avoided assimilation into American culture. Rather, they served as bridges between the old world and the new, places where the newly arrived immigrants could learn from their predecessors and begin the often painful process of adapting to a new homeland.”[27] But the wheels were already in motion. During the war, the government enacted regulations severely restricting the production of alcohol, and by war’s end, more than half the states had enacted prohibition laws. Within a year, America would be dry from coast to coast, and all 24 of Brooklyn's breweries would be shuttered.

On 18th Avenue in College Point, Queens, there is small memorial to the men who died for their country during the First World War (pictured right); most of the listed bear German surnames. During this war, a diverse group of people with differing beliefs and lifestyles was lumped together and labeled as the enemy. In New York City and across the country, markers of their culture were destroyed, institutions were dismantled, and people were forced to deny their identity or else face social isolation and political persecution. Despite this prejudice, German-Americans remained overwhelmingly loyal to the United States, and many fought and died for their adopted country against their former homeland. Of course, the German community was not completely innocent; if there’s one thing German-American elites – from brewers to newspaper men to political clubs – had in common with the German government, it was their tone-deafness. Germany continued to outrage the American public through espionage and submarine attacks, and the pro-German stance of some prominent German-Americans became increasingly untenable. By claiming to speak for the German-American community, they, too contributed in some measure to the bigotry heaped upon their countrymen.

Like much of the history of this war, at least in this country, the story of German-American experiences is largely forgotten. As a result, both the public’s knowledge and the academic scholarship has suffered. Scholars seem to be divided between those who view all Germans as innocent victims and those who believe in every alleged German plot against America; neither view presents a complete picture. But in the history of our own city, and in the landscape around us, we can find pieces of this story that give us a better understanding of the trials that these Americans, immigrant and native-born, experienced during this trying time of war, suspicion, and fear.

Read Part 1.

Special thanks to Father Timothy Dore of Most Holy Trinity-St. Mary Church, and Joseph Coen, archivist at the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn, for helping me with the research for this article. Also, thanks to Save Ellis Island, an organization working to restore the portion of the island currently closed to the public. We visited the area on their tour with Open House New York, which is when I snapped the photo from the former internment quarters.

To learn more about Brooklyn's German heritage, join us for our Brewed in Brooklyn Tour, which explores the emergence of Williamsburg's German community, the ascent of lager beer, and the impacts this has had on the brewing industry today. For tickets and information, click here. For questions or comments about this blog post, please contact Andrew Gustafson or leave a comment below. If you would like to follow this blog, subscribe to our RSS feed or sign up for the Urban Oyster email newsletter. All photos by Andrew Gustafson unless noted.

Footnotes:

[13] Most Holy Trinity Centenary, courtesy of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn Archives.
[14] "German Americans Finish," New York Times, 20 April 1918.
[15] http://www.amityvilleop.org/history.html
[16] Luebke, Frederick C. (1974). Bonds of Loyalty: German Americans and World War I. DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press.
[17] Luebke (1974).
[18] Durante, Dianne L. (2007). Outdoor Monuments of Manhattan: A Historical Guide. New York: NYU Press.
[19] "Interned Germans Are Freely Visited," New York Times, 27 August 1917.
[20] "Take 200 Germans in Round-Up Here," New York Times, 27 September 1917.
[21] "Explosion Wrecks Big Sugar Plant," New York Times, 14 June 1917.
[22] "Fear Ship Brings German Fungus to Kill Our Wheat," New York Times, 8 February 1918.
[23] "Old Tunnel Eludes Police Explorers," New York Times, 29 July 1936.
[24]  "Dry Zones for Factories," Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 8 December 1917.
[25] Okrent, Daniel (2010). Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition. New York: Scribner.
[26]  Ogle, Maureen (2007). Ambitious Brew: The Story of American Beer. New York: Harcourt.
[27] Lerner, Michael (2007). Dry Manhattan: Prohibition in New York City. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

This is the first installment of a two-part series exploring the impacts of the First World War on New York City's German community. Part 2

German culture can be seen all around New York City at this time of year. Oktoberfest is underway, and the festival has become a fixture at drinking establishments across the city. To mark the occasion, this past weekend was the Steuben Parade, one of the largest German-American heritage events in the country. But less than a century ago, German-Americans' culture was demonized, and there was a concerted effort to erase the imprint of German language and culture from the city’s, and the country’s, landscape.

The outbreak of World War I in 1914 placed America’s German community – both immigrants and native-born citizens – in a precarious position unlike anything they had experienced before. This was a population with deep roots in America, but also one undergoing important transformations. During the nineteenth century, there were two major waves of German-speaking immigrants – the first was the result political unrest in the German states during the 1840‘s and 1850’s, while the second occurred in the 1880’s and 1890’s. By 1910, the census showed 2.5 million people born in German-speaking countries, and another 5.8 million first generation German-Americans, making them the largest ethnic group in the country. In his book Bonds of Loyalty: German Americans in World War I, Frederick Luebke explains that this second wave of immigrants was poorer, less educated, and generally less critical of the regime in Germany than the previous group, who had largely been political refugees. As a result, a German-American community emerged that was more self-confident, politically organized, and openly proud of their cultural heritage.[1]

These people shared a common heritage, but we must keep in mind that the German-speaking community in America at this time was not homogeneous. They came from many countries, had different religious backgrounds, held diverse political beliefs, and some spoke mutually-unintelligible languages. Cultural life in major cities tended to be dominated by German “club” society – civic groups and voluntary associations called Vereins – while rural areas were populated by more religious groups. Despite these stark differences, all German culture and people would fall under suspicion and attack. But German-Americans saw the promotion of German institutions, both religious and secular, as an expression of a new American identity. They thought they were embracing the pluralism and freedom they had been denied in their home countries, which made the attacks on their identity all the more damaging.

At the turn of the twentieth century, New York City had a thriving German community with a vast network of institutions. They established newspapers, hospitals, schools, and clubs all over the city. German brewers had made New York one of the largest beer producing cities in the country, and they operated beer gardens, amusement parks, and hotels to serve their thirsty customers. While Germans built these cultural institutions, they also gradually assimilated into the wider American culture. By the outbreak of the war, the city’s Germans were already becoming upwardly mobile. For two decades they had been leaving tenement districts like Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and Manhattan’s Lower East Side – once known as Kleindeutschland or “Little Germany” – for more middle-class neighborhoods like Yorkville in Manhattan and Ridgewood and College Point, Queens.[2]

At the outbreak of the war in August 1914, German-Americans found themselves in an ambiguous position. America was a neutral power, and some Germans – especially those in the press – openly supported the German government in the war, while most favored American neutrality. General sentiment in the US was in favor of the allies and critical of the German conduct of the war, but there was little harassment of Germans. An incident in Brooklyn typifies this sensitive arrangement. In May 1915, a German singing society held their annual Saengerfest at the Thirteenth Regiment Armory, but they hung too many German flags for some people’s liking. After complaints from neighbors and consultation with the National Saengerfest, they compromised and replaced nearly all the German flags with the Stars and Stripes.[3] America was technically neutral, but the reality was far more complex. America sold massive amounts of war materiel to the Entente powers (Britain, France, Russia), but the British naval blockade of Germany made trade impossible, turning the US into the de facto supporter of one side. In response, Germany embarked on a campaign of sabotage and submarine warfare against American shipping, which worsened US-German relations and increasingly shed suspicion on German-Americans.

There were German spies in the United States plotting sabotage and planting propaganda, and they infiltrated German-American cultural and political institutions. Even the mistress of Warren G. Harding, then a US senator from Ohio, is now believed to have been a spy.[4] One of the largest acts of sabotage was perpetrated in New York Harbor on July 30, 1916, when a munitions depot on Black Tom Island in Jersey City exploded. The explosion killed four people, destroyed millions of dollars of war materiel, and damaged the nearby Statue of Liberty. No one was ever charged with the crime, but it was believed to be the work of a German spy ring led by Lothar Witzke that launched a similar attack on a naval base in San Francisco Bay the following March.[5]  (For more on this topic, read this article).

Eventually US-German relations reached a breaking point, and on April 6, 1917, the US declared war on Germany. The following day, the New York Times noted, “Nowhere in the city was there any manifestation of anti-German spirit,”[6] but that would soon change. Simmering suspicion of all things German transformed into mass hysteria. Federal agents and local police began sweeps of German clubs, arresting “enemy aliens” and anyone else who was deemed suspicious. Soon the government would enact sedition and anti-espionage laws that made it illegal to speak out against the country, the president, or the war.

There were dangerous spies operating inside the country, but the ham-fisted manner in which law enforcement behaved makes it difficult to this day to untangle the genuine threats from baseless accusations. Statements like that of the US ambassador to Germany, James Gerard, that there were 500,000 German reservists, and 501,000 lamp post from which to hang them, were patently absurd and inflammatory, but hardly uncommon.[7] One of the bluntest implements employed by the government was the American Protective League, an auxiliary of federal law enforcement agencies empowered to identify and investigate German sympathizers. In reality, it was a vigilante group that harassed, smeared, and attacked anyone with ties to Germany or left-wing political views. With 250,000 members across the country, the group did not uncover a single genuine act of espionage, and was far better at attacking labor unions and anti-war activists than hunting spies.

Across the country, state and local authorities enacted laws to harass and silence the German community. In Staunton, Illinois, residents were permitted to speak only English in public – those who couldn’t were advised to keep silent. German, both as a language of study and of instruction, was stricken from countless school districts, and German monuments and street names were removed in earnest.[8] In June 1918, a Congressman from Michigan introduced a bill to strike the words “Germany” and “Berlin” from every town and street name in America, replacing them with patriotic words like “Liberty” and “Victory.”[9] The law was never enacted, but many cities did change their names; Berlin, Michigan, for example, became Marne, renamed for the 1914 that stopped the German advance on Paris.

But it wasn’t just government authorities who lashed out at Germans. Regular Americans participated in anti-German activities in both mundane and horrifying ways. In the first year of the war, sauerkraut producers complained that demand had fallen by 75%, and they asked the Federal Food Board to rename their product “Liberty Cabbage” or simply “Pickled Vegetable” to remove the German stigma.[10] But it got worse than just refusing to eat sauerkraut. In Edwardsville, Illinois, a local German-speaking pastor was forced into hiding by a violent mob when he refused to ring the bells of his church according to daylight savings time, which was introduced for the war. The low point of this anti-German hysteria was undoubtedly the lynching of Robert Prager in April 1918 in Collinsville, Illinois. A German national accused of being a spy, Prager was seized from his jail cell by a mob and hung from a tree outside of town. He was certainly not a spy, but his pride and intemperate nature probably goaded on the crowd. His murderers were easily acquitted at trial, and the Washington Post remarked, “The more one ponders ... [the] estimate of 400,000 spies, the harder it is to grow righteously indignant over the Illinois lynching.”[11] Prager’s was the only successful lynching, but that was by pure luck – many others were strung up only to be spared at the last minute or to somehow survive the ordeal.

The great irony of this campaign of intimidation and harassment is that those groups of German-Americans who were most critical of the regime and Germany and least likely to take up arms against the United States – religious pacifists groups like the Mennonites – were also subject to the greatest assault because of their outwardly visible language, customs, and separatist lifestyle. Thousands of Mennonites were drafted into military service, despite their conscientious objector status, where they were hazed and imprisoned for refusing to fight.[12]

New York City’s Germans fared rather better than most. They were becoming less geographically concentrated, more prosperous, and more assimilated. In the second part of this post, which will appear later this week, we will explore how anti-German sentiment impacted the landscape and community of New York City.

To learn more about Brooklyn's German heritage, join us for our Brewed in Brooklyn Tour, which explores the emergence of Williamsburg's German community, the ascent of lager beer, and the impacts this has had on the brewing industry today. For tickets and information, click here. For questions or comments about this blog post, please contact Andrew Gustafson or leave a comment below. If you would like to follow this blog, subscribe to our RSS feed or sign up for the Urban Oyster email newsletter. All photos by Andrew Gustafson unless noted.

Footnotes:
[1] Luebke, Frederick C. (1974). Bonds of Loyalty: German Americans and World War I. DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press.
[2] Sherp, John K. (1954). History of the Diocese of Brooklyn, 1853-1953. New York: Fordham University Press.
[3] "German Flags Stir Wrath," New York Times, 29 May 1915.
[4] Robenalt, James D. (2009). The Harding Affair: Love and Espionage During the Great War. New York: Palgrave MacMillan.
[5] http://www.faqs.org/espionage/Bl-Ch/Black-Tom-Explosion.html
[6] "The City's Streets Aglow with Flags," New York Times, 7 April 1917.
[7] "The Race for the White House," Harvard Advocate, 29 January 1920.
[8] Luebke (1974).
[9] "To Strike Germany from Map of U.S.," New York Times, 2 June 1918.
[10] "Sauerkraut May Be 'Liberty Cabbage,'" New York Times, 24 April 1918.
[11] "1918: Robert Prager lynched during war hysteria," ExecutedToday.com.
[12] Luebke (1974).

In recent years, New York’s waterfront has undergone a transformation. Piers and warehouses are being transformed into beautiful public spaces and upscale housing, and the working waterfront has receded further and further from view.

But New York remains a bustling and active harbor. The Working Harbor Committee aims to educate the public about the people and processes that make the harbor run, and without whom our modern existence would be impossible. One of their marquee events is the annual Tugboat Race and Competition on the Hudson River. Every year, a selection of the harbor's many working tugboats show off their speed, pushing power, skilled crew members.

We watched this year’s race from the finish line at Pier 84 in Manhattan, alongside the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum. The competitors included a wide range of tugs, from 3,000-horsepower behemoths to boats that looked fit for a bathtub. As always, the competition was called by Captain Jerry Roberts, who founded the event and has organized all 18 previous. When I heard Captain Jerry’s voice over the PA system, I thought it belonged in a professional broadcasting booth, and his call made the race sound as exciting as any sporting event I’ve attended. The tugboats’ radio channel was also plugged into the PA, so periodically their banter would cut into Jerry’s commentary. The race call was briefly interrupted when a powerboat filled with shirtless photo-seekers sped onto the course, which had been closed to all traffic for the race. Captain Jerry repeatedly instructed them to leave the course, and they barreled closer and closer to the approaching tugs. Then a Coast Guard Auxiliary boat rocketed onto the scene, and the crowd erupted in cheers as they forced the interlopers off the course with some nifty maneuvering and, one hopes, delivered a hefty fine.

But the tugs raced on uninterrupted. The Ross Sea, a K-Sea owned tug, won the race handily, followed by the Maurania III and the Quantico Creek. The Catherine C Miller vied with the Pegasus for fourth, and though I don’t have the official results yet (they should be posted soon here), the Millers deserve special consideration for fielding (floating?) three tugs in the race, including the Freddie K and the Susan.

After the boats crossed the finish line, they engaged in a some nose-to-nose pushing contests to see who was more powerful – or who was more willing to risk their engines for a contest. That was followed by a rope-throwing contest, in which crews were timed to see who could pull up alongside the pier and toss a rope over a cleat in the shortest time – a bit of ballet between ship and crew. Unfortunately we had to leave before the official results were announced (or the spinach-eating contest got underway). But we will definitely be back next year for the 20th running for the tugs.

New York Harbor, and tugboats especially, are a very popular subject for amateur and professional photographers, and already we have seen a wonderful selection of photos from this year’s race online (including from Newtown Pentacle, Tugster, and all over Flickr). Our photos certainly don’t stand up well, but here’s a brief slideshow of our day on the waterfront.

One of the most talented and thoughtful photographers of New York’s waterfront was Bernie Ente, who also worked at the Working Harbor Committee. We had the pleasure of going on a couple of the committee’s Hidden Harbor tours with Bernie (which we wrote about in an earlier post.) Bernie passed away this spring, and he was certainly missed at this year’s race.

If you would like learn more about New York's bustling waterfront, check out the many programs and tours sponsored by the Working Harbor Committee. Urban Oyster also offers regular tours of one of the waterfront's key landmarks, the Brooklyn Navy Yard (click here for details and tickets). You can also follow the working ships in the harbor in real time online on this AIS Marine Traffic map.

For questions or comments about this blog post, please contact Andrew Gustafson or leave a comment. If you would like to follow this blog, subscribe to our RSS feed or sign up for the Urban Oyster email newsletter. All photos by Andrew Gustafson unless noted.

Three weeks ago, my friend Margie sent me an email asking me if I wanted to go camping in Central Park. Now, I know lots of people camp in the park every night, and usually not by choice, but it was not something I ever really wanted to experience. The first thought that came to mind was a scene from the movie The Out-of-Towners, when Jack Lemmon and Sandy Dennis are forced to sleep in Central Park after being mugged, kidnapped, and marooned there, at which point they are promptly mugged again while sleeping, this time at knifepoint by a man in a cape.

But Margie reminded me that this was all totally above board – the Parks Department runs a program called the Urban Park Rangers, which offers camping experiences in nearly all the city parks during the summer. The camping is totally free, but due to the demand, slots are awarded by lottery. Margie’s roommate Johanna had put her name in for four slots, and she won – a Friday night in Central Park’s Great Hill. The Parks Department provides you with a tent and dinner, so all you need to bring is a sleeping bag, flashlight, and whatever else you think you might need for a night in Central Park.

So we loaded up our packs, and Cindy and I were headed off to our campsite by subway. Though it’s billed as “family camping,” there were only three or four children in the entire group of 30 campers. The rest were made up of couples without kids or groups of young people (like us) out to experience the city in a new way. First step – set up our tent. We may have been the fastest setting up, but by no means were we the most effective. During the night, one of the stakes holding down our rain fly came loose; when heavy rain struck, water began pouring into the tent, leaving me, sleeping next to the wall, in a rather unpleasant puddle. In my half-awoken state, I thought it better to simply roll away from the rapidly accumulating water than to get up and fix the problem, and I eventually fell back to sleep, sopping wet. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Due to restrictions on campfires and other open flames – and, I’m guessing, budget concerns, as this is a free program – dinner options are quite limited. The Parks Department’s solution is to distribute surplus MREs – Meals Ready to Eat – from the United States military. As a food, they leave a lot to be desired, but for someone who has never served in the armed forces, tearing into one was an illuminating experience. The whole meal comes in a small cardboard box, and inside is an assortment of smaller vacuum-sealed bags; mine included cinnamon bread, apple sauce, crackers, lemonade mix, and my main course of imitation boneless pork “ribs” (similar to a McRib, but without the bun). Without the convenience of fire to heat your meal, the MRE comes with a chemical pouch – stick in your meal (still in its seal bag), add some water, and in a couple of minutes the chemical reaction raging inside the bag will have your meal piping hot. While you wait, you can read some of the interesting information on the outside of the MRE box, like “Nutrition: Force Multiplier”; the box also doubles as a postcard that you can write to friends and family. In all, we were left with a not inedible meal, and a depressing pile of plastic bags. All the campers were good enough to throw out their accumulated trash, but it made me think of the mountains of MRE detritus piling up in Iraq and Afghanistan. It wasn’t the worst thing I’ve ever eaten, but I don’t think I’ll be stocking up at the army surplus store for my own camping trips in the future.

After dinner, we waited a while for the sun to set completely so that we could embark on a nighttime hike with a park ranger. I was pretty unfamiliar with the northern potion of Central Park, but the hike convinced me it’s a place I need to return to in the daylight. I can’t recall the exact route of our hike (it was pitch dark, after all), but we walked along the Pool and the Loch – a series of ponds, waterfalls and archways that evoke incredible seclusion – and out to Lasker Pool. Along the way we encountered a raccoon (which I didn’t see) and a screech-owl (which I only heard).

One of the intriguing things about Central Park is that the landscape at once gives you a sense of what a wild Manhattan may have looked like, yet at the same time it is an entirely artificial creation. The northern reaches of the park were hilly, and streams flowed through it, both of which are absent in the surrounding streetscape. One stop on our hike was the Blockhouse, a redoubt dating to the Revolutionary War and the park’s oldest structure, which still sits on the original hill it did back then. Yet so much of the landscape is manufactured. Hills were plowed down and built up; streams dug and waterfalls formed; trees planted and meadows cut. The park’s architects wanted visitors to have a transcendent experience of the natural world, but the slice of Manhattan they carved out offered insufficient majesty and diversity of features in its natural state for their liking. The park has also changed greatly since it opened and adapted to meet the needs and tastes of the city around it. Rather than “a retreat as completely rural in character as circumstances would admit,” as its chief architect Frederick Law Olmsted envisioned it, Central Park is a recreational and cultural resourcing serving far wider functions – and a far wider public – than Olmsted ever imagined.

And since this first great park was created, many more have joined it; a glance at the subway map will tell you that the city is rich with parks, despite their unattractive, olive green tint. But beyond the meticulously constructed natural landscapes of city’s parks, there are neglected, forgotten spaces where one can witness the natural world re-emerging. Photographer Nate Kensinger documents these places on his blog, which he terms “the abandoned & industrial edges of New York City”; but nearly as evocative in some of his images as what was cast off and left behind is what is taking its place. One such place is the Brooklyn Navy Yard, which Nate has photographed extensively. While most of the old industrial sites are being revived for new businesses (more than 5,000 people are employed at the Yard today), other places haven't yet caught up with the Yard’s reinvention – at least for now.  Inside the Yard, the Navy Hospital Campus is a lush and haunting site.  While the hospital closed in 1948, the Navy operated housing and offices on the 20-acre property as late as the 1980's (it was later sold to the city and makes up part of the industrial park).  With few visitors and the buildings not in use, it is a tranquil place in the midst of the city, currently occupied only by feral cats and the remnants of a former cemetery that will soon become a memorial park.  But it will not stay that way for long – talks underway to adaptively reuse the site, including the landmark Surgeon's House and Navy Hospital, as part of a university campus. Incidentally, the only way for the public to visit the Hospital Campus is on one of our bus or bicycle tours of the Brooklyn Navy Yard, and it is always a highlight.

It is in these spaces, I would argue, where one can still experience the “retreat” that Olmsted was aiming for, and in fact, they are as much a part of the resurgence of the natural in New York as our parks. Deindustrialization has opened up new spaces for habitat, and when combined with an already extensive network of parks and a commitment to cleaning up the city’s air and waterways, it means natural diversity is returning to New York in a big way. Sometimes this comes as a pleasant surprise, as when beavers reappeared in the Bronx River, or a seal lumbered up on a Manhattan beach. Other times, we find it less convenient, like yesterday, when a bale of turtles invaded a runway at JFK Airport, or when a flock of geese put a passenger jet in the Hudson. Author Robert Sullivan wrote last year in New York Magazine:

Nature is prospering in New York. Yes, the otters, minks, bears, and mountain lions have long since disappeared. But nature as a whole—the ecosystem that is the harbor—never went away. In fact—and this may seem implausible—nature is in many ways more plentiful in New York City than it is in the surrounding suburbs and rural counties. New York is again a capital of nature; we are an ecological hot spot.

But back to Central Park. After the hike, we retired to our tents around 11, earlier than we would on most Friday nights, and judging by the sounds around us, earlier than most people in New York City. Throughout the night we could hear the rumble of traffic on Central Park West and the clatter of the Metro-North trains on the Park Avenue Viaduct to the east. The park does not close until 1 a.m., and people seemed to take full advantage of this late curfew. Between the traffic noise and a nearby drum circle that started up around midnight (not to mention the small flood that would come later), it was a somewhat restless night for me. But we could not sleep in because we had to be packed up and off the lawn by 8 a.m., when the sprinkler system is scheduled to turn on. Soon after that, our little campground would turn back into a field for children playing games and Saturday picnickers.

By 8:30, I was back home in Brooklyn, hanging up my pack and sleeping bag in the shower to dry, and thankful that, in this city that can seem so impossibly crowded, so removed from natural beauty, you can still experience at least a taste of wilderness.  

If you would like to participate in the Family Camping program, online registration takes place throughout the summer, and there are upcoming programs in nearly all the participating parks, including Central Park and Brooklyn’s Prospect Park. Click here for registration deadlines, program dates, and other details. Nate Kensinger recently wrote about his own urban camping experience, and the piece includes photographs of the campsite at Staten Island’s Wolfe’s Pond Park, as well as a lot of useful information about camping opportunities in New York City. If you would like to see more work by Kristen Brenneman Eno, visit her website.

For questions or comments about this blog post, please contact Andrew Gustafson or leave a comment. If you would like to follow this blog, subscribe to our RSS feed or sign up for the Urban Oyster email newsletter. All photos by Andrew Gustafson unless noted.

In preparation for an upcoming program Urban Oyster is doing for a group of 6th graders about the Brooklyn Bridge (send us a note on our tour inquiries page to find out more about this), I’ve been reading The Great Bridge, David McCullough’s outstanding history of the building of the bridge. McCullough traces the story from designer John A. Roebling’s upbringing in Germany and his earlier engineering triumphs through to the completion of the bridge by his son and protege, Washington. McCullough brings to life not only the masterminds of the project, but the men who endured the toil of the construction, the political controversies swirling around it, and the wife, Emily Roebling, who shepherded her ailing husband through to the bridge’s completion.

The bridge itself is an iconic symbol of New York City, but the saga of its construction and its slow rise out of the East River marked watershed moments in the lives of a generation of New Yorkers and Brooklynites. Thousands gathered on the shoreline to watch landmark stages of the construction unfold. One of the most enlivening parts of McCullough’s book is the description of the first wire strung across the East River between the bridge’s gargantuan stone towers in 1876.

After stringing the first “traveler” rope, which would be used to lay successively larger wires over the span, it was decided to make use of it to actually cross the river. E.F. Farrington, a master mechanic who had worked on the bridge since construction began in 1869, was chosen for the high-wire theatrics. He was strapped into a bowswain’s chair – a sort of swing attached to a pulley – and he made the journey up the wire from the Brooklyn shore to the first tower, and then down across the river, dangling over 200 feet in the air. This historic moment was famously captured by an artist for Harper’s Monthly (pictured above), with Farrington waving his hat in triumph to the crowds below.

But a far more exciting moment, at least in McCullough’s telling, came when the second traveler wire was strung. This rope was lashed to the first and pulled out along the bridge’s span. Workmen where then sent out from both towers in swings to cut the lashings with knives and separate the two cables. Harry Supple, a sailor who had worked on the bridge for six years, was sent down between the New York tower and anchorage, and he detached the ropes with incredible ease and speed. As McCullough writes, “When his feet landed on the anchorage, the ovation was such that he ought to have taken a long bow” (p. 367). The two men tasked with cutting the lashings over the main span, however, ran into some trouble, getting stuck only partway down.

It was at this point that young Supple, who had by now returned to the top of the New York tower, decided to go to the rescue. He swung himself out over the river, sailor-style, hand over hand, with his legs wrapped around the traveler rope. He reached Carroll quickly enough, passed him by, and cut the next lashing, which instantly freed the pulley. Then back he went, up to the tower, in the same way he had come down, carrying on an easy conversation with those on the tower all the while. The crowd below was ecstatic" (p. 367-8).

No fan of heights myself, I could feel my palms getting clammy as I read this passage. A short while later, the traveler got hung up again, and Supple repeated his feat, nonchalantly shimmying out over oblivion, much to the crowd’s delight. He was no stranger to the perils of the work, nor were any of the workers on the enormous project. He had narrowly escaped death at least once (and probably many other times as well) in 1871 when during construction of the Brooklyn tower, the hoisting derricks collapsed while lifting massive stone blocks, crushing two men below and injuring others, including Supple. Sadly, the lithe sailor would not get to see the bridge completed, as he was killed in 1878 when a strand of the bridge’s main support cables snapped, knocking him off the New York anchorage and throwing him 80 feet down to the street below.

I recently felt a similar thrill as I did from reading McCullough’s account of these death-defying feats when I watched Safety Last!, a 1923 film starring Harold Lloyd. Far less known known than Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton, Lloyd was nonetheless an equally skilled master of physical comedy in the silent era (which earned him the nickname “The Third Genius”). The climax of the film shows Lloyd scaling the facade of building for an ill-conceived publicity stunt to drum up business at the department store where he works and impress his fiancee. At each floor he is harangued by dogs, flocks of pigeons, and absent-minded residents, all of whom nearly send the inexperienced climber to his death. Lloyd did most of the stunts himself, including the famous shot dangling from the hands of a clock high above the street, with only primitive safety equiment (mattresses were piled two or three stories below to break his fall) and despite the fact that he was missing his thumb and index finger on one hand. In my opinion, modern, high-tech blockbusters have offered few shots more thrilling than these:

(Jump to the 52 minute mark for the climactic scene, or feel free to watch the whole movie. Click here for a brief but fascinating documentary showing some of the filming locations around Los Angeles used in Lloyd's movies, including Safety Last!)

But movie stunts are one thing; dangerous, back-breaking work another entirely. In all, between 20 and 30 men lost their lives building the Brooklyn Bridge (accounts differ as to the exact number, but here is one list of casualties), from falls, equipment failures, and other accidents. Even the bridge’s designer, John A. Roebling, was felled by the bridge. While surveying the construction site, his foot was crushed by a ferry, an injury that led to a fatal case of tetanus. The condition came about as the result of his belief in the curative powers of moving water, in which he soaked his injured foot constantly, leading to the bacterial infection and his slow, painful death in 1869.

His son Washington took over the project as chief engineer, and he subjected himself to all the dangers he asked his men to endure. But he soon fell ill with a debilitating case of caisson disease, known today as decompression sickness or “the bends.” Caused from working in the compressed air environment of the caissons – massive underwater chambers used to excavate the riverbed for the bridge tower foundations – and returning to normal air pressure too quickly, the condition killed at least three workers and left countless others sick or maimed. The younger Roebling survived working in the caissons, and he stayed on as chief engineer until the bridge’s completion in 1883, but he was so weakened that he coordinated the construction from his sickbed for the better part of 12 years, aided by his extraordinary and talented wife, Emily.

I can only imagine the thrill he felt watching from his window as Farrington and Supple went out on the wires, connecting the span of his masterwork for the very first time.

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