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See a long-lost carousel by Keith Haring, a Ferris wheel by Basquiat, and more fantastical works!
Image via Library of Congress
As part of the Greenwich Series, a monthly series dedicated to the quirkier side of life, we were asked to curate our favorite bizarre true stories about New York City. Here are the few of the fun facts we showcased at last night’s event in the East Village, including buried time capsules, a building that was lost in its entirety (twice), and the most bizarre fact about our drinking water.
The Edward Laing Stores/Bogardus Building. Image via Library of Congress
Keys, bikes, a wallet – these are things that more commonly get lost. But New York City has an entire building that was stolen, twice. The Bogardus Building/Edward Laing Stores, notable for being one of the first cast-iron buildings in the city, was taken down piece by piece for preservation in a future building at Manhattan Borough Community College. The Bogardus building sat in a vacant lot, awaiting construction to begin when on June 25th, 1974, Beverly Moss Spatt, chairman of the Landmarks Preservation Commission reportedly ran into the press room at City Hall announcing, “Someone has stolen one of my buildings!”
A building contractor saw three men loading large pieces into truck. They had been stealing up to 2/3 of the facade over the course of a few weeks. 22 pieces were later found in a Bronx junkyard, and moved to a secret location in a city-owned building on 52nd Street, off 10th Avenue.
When architects went to measure the panels, to be incorporated into a South Street Seaport building, in June 1977, the hidden storage unit was missing all of the panels. Read more about the Bogardus Building here.
Construction of the Ashokan Reservoir in 1910. Image from New York City Department of Environmental Protection
New York City has some of the best drinking water in the country, but it didn’t come without a price. Six reservoirs of the Catskill Aqueduct, including Ashokan Reservoir which is New York City’s largest, were formed by flooding a dozen towns. 2000 people were relocated, including a thousand New Yorkers with second homes. 32 cemeteries were unearthed and the 1,800 residents buried elsewhere, to limit water contamination. Residents were offered $15 from the city ($65 later for the Delaware Aqueduct) to disinter their relatives and rebury them elsewhere.
Buildings and industries were relocated or burned down, trees and brush were removed from the future reservoir floor–all the work done predominantly by local laborers, African-Americans from the south and Italian immigrants. Four towns were submerged while eight were relocated to build the Ashokan Reservoir. Today, remnants of foundations, walls, and more can still be seen, particularly when water levels are lower–often in the fall. Although access to the reservoirs has been limited since 9/11, you can see some of those archeological finds from bridges.
Read more about the drowned towns here.
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On September 23, 1939, an 800-pound tube made of an alloy of copper and chromium called Cupaloy was lowered 50 feet into the ground at the site of the Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company exhibit of the 1939-40 New York World’s Fair. The tube’s contents comprised 35 items one might find in any run-of-the-mill Smith family household, including copies of Life magazine, a Sears Roebuck catalog, cigarettes and seeds of wheat, corn, alfalfa and soy, each examined and preserved in inert argon and nitrogen gas to remain intact for the next five thousand years–until the year 6939 to be exact.
The device was an engineering feat, a “time capsule” as notable New York public relations counselor George Edward Pendray called it for the very first time in 1939.
The burying of the first Westinghouse Time Capsule in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park was one of the last and most widely publicized events of the two-year 1939-40 World’s Fair. The capsule itself was accompanied by a record of its contents that also included extensive instructions detailing its recovery accounting for changing geography, political boundaries and even the loss of modern timekeeping (look to the stars, the book advises). This record was then distributed in the thousands to museums and libraries across the world in the event that any one copy, even the original, might be lost. A second time capsule was buried for the 1964 World’s Fair, also for 5000 years.
Read more about the World’s Fair time capsule here.
The Dewey Arch of 1899. Image via Library of Congress
Incredibly, there have been four temporary arches located at Madison Square. This is the Dewey Arch of 1899, which commemorated Commodore Dewey’s victory over the Spanish at Manila Bay the year before. Also in 1899, two arches were constructed to commemorate the centennial celebration of George Washington’s inauguration at 23rd Street and 26th Street.
In 1918, the Victory Arch was a temporary monument of wood and plaster built to commemorate New Yorkers who died in WWI.
As a fun note, the Washington Square Arch was also first a temporary arch funded by the residents around the square before a permanent one was built by Stanford White.
Read more about the New York City’s grand arches here.
On December 16, 1960, a United Airlines DC-8 and a TWA Super Constellation, collided over Staten Island. The TWA plane would crash on the southern coast of Staten Island, and the United Airlines plane would go down on Sterling Place in Park Slope. It was the deadliest air accident to date at the time with a total death toll of 134 people. It would also be the first accident to be investigated using the infamous “black box.”
Today, the scars of the 1960 plane crash have been mostly repaired, erased or built over, but there are some remnants you can still find today. Read more about them here.
Next, check out 5 notorious NYC murder scenes or read about architectural accidents in NYC history.
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