The Lost Iron Tower of Howard Avenue

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Like something out of Edgar Rice Burroughs or Robert E. Howard, this tall cylinder can been seen peeking out from behind the trees on Howard Avenue next to St. John's. Of course when I was younger my friends and I decided we had to make an effort to penetrate the dense woods and find out what it was.
Well, as you can sort of see, security's pretty lax and the woods aren't really that thick. We simply slipped through a gap in the fence and walked up to the metal column. I guess it's about eight or ninety feet high. There's not really much going on with it. There was an oval hole in the side that we were able to look into and see the great nothing inside and the sky through the open top above. And that was it. We went home and never bothered going back.





Apparently it's just a DEP Water Department water tower. The old photo's from 1937.

Sad Ferries

As a native Staten Islander I grew up riding the ferry into Manhattan on a regular basis. Whenever relatives descended on us from New England we'd take them to the museums and shopping and all sorts of touristy jazz. I rode them with my father to see the three real Star Wars movies at the Loew's Astor. Later I took them to college and to work.

The names of those boats still echo in my head: the American Legion, the Gov. Lehman, and the Cornelius Kolf and the Pvt. Merrell. These last two were decommissioned in 1986 and converted into prison barges. Finally they were simply sold for scrap and ripped apart.