Walking Is Transportation

THE ROMANCE OF THE INDUSTRIAL LANDSCAPE

On the waterfront

On a clear day, you can see St. Peter's.                                                                     (Steve Nutt Photo)

THE VIEW FROM BAYONNE

When my friend Kevin lived two doors away on St. Marks Place in St. George--before he moved back to Boulder County, Colorado--he and I would sometimes head for the Kill van Kull, two short blocks down the hill, where he would hunt for beach glass and I would think about restoration of passenger rail on the north shore, the unused right-of-way only steps from the shoreline where we stood.

One beautiful, clear, sunny day, Kevin and I thrashed through the grasses to our accustomed spot.  I stopped, looked around me and felt utterly serene and content. Everything seemed beautiful. Even the gleaming white tanks on the opposite shore. Even the flotsam (or is it jetsam?) deposited on the narrow strip of sand along the water.

Steve Nutt Photo

I let out a deep, contented sigh. "God, aren't we lucky," I said, taking in the sweep of sky and water, watching a tug approach from the west.

Kevin looked up quizzically from the glass fragment he'd been turning over in his hand. I extended my arm in a sweeping gesture to show him what I meant, indicating the fairly narrow waterway in front of us and the shorelines on either side.

He just shook his head and smiled, not saying a word. He didn't have to.

I knew that to him, I was delusional. What I was going on about was not beauty, not to him; it was urban devastation. He was headed back to Boulder County, after all, to drink his morning coffee looking out at the front range of the Rocky Mountains.

Steve Nutt Photo

AN UNDERSTANDING NOD

My friend Steve Nutt, an artist from Ward Hill who works in clay and fiber, wouldn't have shaken his head. He'd have nodded in understanding and agreement. I know this because I've seen Steve's photos. The ones he took not long ago while biking through the industrial desolation of Bayonne, the part of it I can see from my office window. Not now, of course, but in January, when the trees are bare of leaf.

When I clicked through Steve's photos, I felt as though I was viewing something I wasn't supposed to. Unsanctioned views of Staten Island's north shoreline. Photos taken from questionable angles and locations. Pictures of a part of New Jersey that got away geologically but didn't go far. A kind of entering uninvited through a back door.

Weren't there snarling German Shepherds guarding the blinding whiteness of those storage tanks on the Bayonne shore? Didn't he need a pass to cross over into a particularly spooky industrial No Man's Land? Or at the very least, a note from the mayor? When I asked Steve what had prompted his solitary adventure, he sent me the following.

Steve Nutt dining al fresco outside
the Metropolitan Museum of Art,
March, 2009.

TALE OF A LONE BAYONNE BIKER
(Guest blogger:
Steve Nutt)

Having lived within a few blocks of the waters of north shore Staten Island for 28 years, my cameras have pointed away from the island towards New Jersey, Manhattan, and Brooklyn countless times.  And I have recorded the island's north shore many times as well. From Bay Ridge, Brooklyn Heights, lower Manhattan (yes, the top of the WTC) and most often from the decks of the Staten Island Ferry.  But only once from the shores of New Jersey, specifically from Bayonne.

On a hazy summer morning, probably a Sunday, I'd biked over the Bayonne Bridge and found my way to the shoreline park that starts just below the eastern side of the bridge.

My Canon Elph and I worked our way further east. Residential streets gave way to industrial ones. I did my best to stay close to the shore.

I was intent on creating a ribbon of long narrow images of everything from Port Richmond to St. George.

Large industrial blocks made it impossible to record the Staten Island waterfront as I would have liked. But in the end, I stood between the white petrol storage tanks and the Kill van Kull, facing and photographing the shoreline from which I had studied the Jersey side so many times before.

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A COMPANY HISTORY THAT'S OUR HISTORY, TOO • NO WIT ON SUMMER WEEKENDS

Caddell Dry Dock & Repair Company's shipyard workers gather for a group shot aboard the Buchanan Marine LP tug, Buchanan 10, February, 2004. (Photo by Michael Falco; please click to enlarge.)

MORE THAN IT SEEMS

At first glance, Caddell Dry Dock: 100 Years Harborside seems to be the book its title suggests: an account of the history of a century-old Staten Island company whose business is dry docking and ship repair.

But for early 21st-century Staten Islanders, the stylish coffee table hardcover written by Erin Urban, founding executive director of the Noble Maritime Collection at Snug Harbor Cultural Center--with contemporary photos by former Staten Island Advance photographer Michael Falco and an overall design by Ciro Galeno, Jr.--is more than simply the life story of a local industrial enterprise.

With an introduction by John B. Caddell II, the company's chairman and CEO, and a foreword by Peter Stanford, president emeritus of the National Maritime Historical Society, Caddell Dry Dock is also, in part and in effect, a social and industrial history of Staten Island's north shore in the 20th century.

FOR THREE GENERATIONS, A FAMILY FIRM

Urban's account of Caddell Dry Dock's origins portray company founder John B. (J.B.) Caddell as the sort of capable, energetic and ambitious figure we associate with the beginnings of America's key industries.

The founding Caddell left home in Nova Scotia in 1888 and worked at various shipyards in New England and New York before opening a yard with two partners in Red Hook, Brooklyn, in 1903, and his own yard, the John B. Caddell Dry Dock Company, in 1916 at the foot of Broadway (at Richmond Terrace) in West Brighton.

Son Leroy succeeded him as president when J.B. took early retirement; grandson John B. Caddell II continued family tradition, becoming president and then chairman and CEO, a position he holds today.

                              
The tug Mister T in dry dock #3 with the Barbara E. Bouchard behind her in dry dock #7. (Photo by Michael Falco)

AN INDUSTRY CENTRAL
TO STATEN ISLAND'S DEVELOPMENT

Urban's text recalls the north shore's vibrant shipbuilding and repair industry, principally along the Kill van Kull--and other types of businesses dependent then as now on waterway access--that provided jobs, attracted settlement and development, and no doubt fueled the growth of small retail and other types of commerce.

Caddell Dry Dock also connects us to the local people of those times, men and women whose lives were tied up with sailing and shipbuilding and dry docking and kindred trades--as reflected in our own day by the ongoing life of institutions such as the Society for Seamen's Children, or Sailors' Snug Harbor, now Snug Harbor Cultural Center, home to the Noble Maritime Collection. On the north shore, the impress of the industry runs deep.

DRY DOCKING: HOW IT'S DONE

Author Erin Urban tells the Caddell Dry Dock story from several perspectives.

First, there is the history underlying the founding of what is still, more than a century later, a family firm--almost unimaginable in a world dominated by multinational corporations. Interwoven with that more personal history is a profile of the development of the company and the yard, which grew in size and in its capabilities over time.

The remaining portions of the text were for me the most compelling. One is a recounting of the ancient origins of dry docking itself, a complex and perilous process. Erin Urban describes it thus:

"Dry docking," she writes, "the process of getting a ship out of the water to clean and make repairs below the waterline, began in ancient times when mariners brought their vessels ashore at high tide, heeled them over, made repairs, and 'breamed' the hull" [burning off the accumulated growth] "before the tide refloated them.

"The obvious advantage of the permanent dry dock," Urban continues, "is that it allows workers to access hulls from all sides at once and complete repairs and cleaning in a much more efficient manner."

The Barbara E. Bouchard
awaits repairs pierside.
(Photo by Michael Falco)

SATISFYING
'PHOTOGRAPHER LUST'

The concluding section is a portfolio of contemporary photographs of the dry dock and the people who work there (plus a brief introductory essay) by Michael Falco, former Staten Island Advance photographer. These images supplement the book's many historical photographs.

"I had never been in a shipyard," Falco writes in his essay's opening paragraph. "I'd looked at Caddell's from a distance with photographer lust––I think every photographer feels the same way––and always wanted to get inside."

When Falco did finally gain entry as photographer for the book, he felt privileged to be able to record the workings of a world few outsiders are permitted to see.

"I wanted to get each shot right," Falco tells us in the concluding lines of his essay. "Let's face it, they're it. In New York Harbor, the Caddell guys are the cream of the crop. Who else is there? Who else can do what they do?"

Falco's photographs give us the closest glimpse of what they do that we outsiders are ever likely to get.

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CADDELL DRY DOCK: 100 Years Harborside by Erin Urban, with contemporary photographs by Michael Falco. 113pp. Illustrated. Index. Published by The Noble Maritime Collection, Staten Island, NY. $40. Available at The Noble Maritime Collection or from Amazon.com. All proceeds from the sale of the book benefit The Noble Maritime Collection.

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FROM NOW
THROUGH MID-SEPTEMBER,
NO WIT ON WEEKENDS

Who wants to be indoors reading WALKING IS TRANSPORTATION (WIT), when you could be chatting with neighbors at the Greenmarket, hiking in the Greenbelt or soaking up some rays at what is now a cleaner, safer and more inviting shore?

According to my SiteMeter readings, about half as many of you show up at this site on weekends as on weekdays once the weather warms.

So, effective tomorrow, I'm suspending Saturday and Sunday publication, which will resume in mid- September. But please, don't stray too far. I have another stellar issue of WALKING IS TRANSPORTATION set to run this coming Monday, the first day of June, and thereafter on weekdays throughout the summer.

It matters to me that you take the time to read what I write and look at the images I select for this blog. Thank you.--Dan Icolari

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THE WATERFRONT, NOT JUST THE VIEW

A tugboat heads east on the Kill Van Kull near Port Richmond, Staten Island, with Bayonne, New Jersey in the background. (Photo by Ed Mahala)

LOCKED ON LAND AT THE WATER'S EDGE

I'm told you can live in the middle of this island and feel as landlocked as a Nebraskan.

But of course it's just as possible to feel that way, living here at the water's edge, if you seldom go near the water. The water, in this case, being the Kill van Kull, which flows west from New York Harbor, sandwiched between Staten Island and Bayonne, New Jersey, to Newark Bay and into another Kill called Arthur.

To live here is to live along, or close by, an active industrial waterway with its own (yes) proud industrial history, some of which survives even now, long past Staten Island's industrial prime. Mostly the waterway goes about its business seen yet unseen, especially by those of us who are its nearest, most constant neighbors. But the audible waterway won't let you forget it's there.

SOMETIMES INVISIBLE, BUT RARELY SILENT

Even indoors in winter, with one layer of window glass and one layer of heavier insulating glass muffling the sounds of the machines and multitudes outside, the Kill van Kull won't be stifled. The whistles and horns call and respond to each other along its span, a music played mostly in the early evening.

Looking out at the Kill Van Kull from Faber Pool Park esplanade, Port Richmond; the Bayonne Bridge in the background. (Photo by Ed Mahala)

And though it happens much less often than when we first moved to this house two short blocks above Richmond Terrace, there are still the times when I wake from the muddle of not-quite-sleep and feel the merest vibration, which I imagine as the churning of powerful engines submerged beneath the waterway at the bottom of the hill.

A LITTLE-NOTICED BACKDROP

And yes, the sight of tankers and container ships gliding right or left at the bottom of Westervelt Avenue still stops me in my tracks, just as it did when we moved here decades ago.

Even the clanging and pounding of the periodic dredgings by the Army Corps of Engineers have a kind of romance. They're what keep the containers and barges and tankers and tugs moving--little noticed by most of us, most of the time--through this water- and silt-filled crevasse.

Other than vague impressions and romantic notions, though, I really know very little about a stretch of waterway that has been the backdrop for more than 30 years of my life. But that, I hope, is about to change now that warmer weather is here.

ON THE KILL:  An ocean-going container vessel and a tug pass under the Bayonne Bridge near Port Richmond. (Photo by Ed Mahala)

THE CONTINUING EDUCATION
OF A STATEN ISLANDER

The impressions I've just related are, all of them, passive, formed at a distance. And even where I've had a more active, intimate association with the point where land meets water--along the Ballpark Esplanade in St. George, at the Snug Harbor dock in New Brighton, and at Faber Pool Park in Port Richmond--they've been safe, civilized and tentative.

Though much of the waterfront is off-limits, either because it's under commercial or industrial use or because it's a contaminated brownfield, I propose to explore, photograph and write about whatever bits of unfenced stretches of waterfront are accessible, as far west along the Kill van Kull as seems safe and interesting.

I consider the effort part of my continuing education as a Staten Islander. I hope it yields some work you'll find worth looking at and reading.