The Most Wondrous and Depressing Web Site

DetroitYES is a forum for exploring the ruins and history of Detroit as well as discussing its potential futures. In 1950 the population of the city had swelled to 1,849,568. Today it's fallen to 916,952. The history of racial conflict and economic decline in Detroit is way too complex to go into here at this time and I don't know enough about it.

I first got a sense of the city's decline and parlous state after I read "Devil's Night" by Zev Chafets back in 1992 or thereabouts (which I got in the temporary discount book store that was in the old Richmond Avenue Rockbottom back around that time). Detroit was a city that held no place in my brain except as some sort of place with car factories. Little did I know that that was increasingly a thing of the past and that the city founded in 1701 by Antoine Laumet de La Mothe, sieur de Cadillac was a rotting corpse with little chance of revivication.




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The Urban Prairie of St. Cyril's - Seemingly countless blocks of working class homes have been swept away by time and tide and the wrecker's ball.

Since then I've learned a little more about Detroit and its fall, particularly following the riot of 1967. Economic collapse, racial animosity, political corruption and just plain meanness took a city that once numbered almost 2 million down to under 1 million and its populations continues to fall.

I once thought cities aren't disposable. How could things ever happen that would lead to the abandonment of vast swaths of expensive or desirable real estate? Recently I've been reminded of the great lost cities of antiquity like Ur and Sumer. Time passes them by, populations shift and the flow of history is diverted to flow in other directions. That's what's happened to Detroit and other American cities like Baltimore and Newark. It's just happened in our own short lifetimes, not over the ages like in the Fertile Crescent.


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Just tooling around on GoogleMaps I found this liquor store housed in the husk of what was probably a bank in the midst of nowhere.


Also check out: Forgotten Detroit

One More Neighborhood Church

Next to my neighborhood (Cottage Hill, once Hamilton Park) are Livingston and Snug Harbor. Livingston is home to an old and storied Unitarian Church. The present building is the third home of Staten Island's Unitarians, following the original building on Cebra Avenue(which was sold to the German Lutherans to become the original Trinity German Evangelical Lutheran Church who moved the whole thing over the hill to St. Paul's Avenue and Beach Street),





then the "St. Roofus" building in the same location as the present building's.







Finally, in 1895, years after the Great Blizzard of 1888 brought down the roof of "St. Roofus", the present building was erected. It's a tidy little building with a pleasant look to it. You can see the small trees in the older photo now grown old and larger surrounding it in the contemporary picture.


Unitarianism has been described somewhere as a soft pillow on the descent to atheism. Perhaps that's a bit extreme , but it is a bit nebulous and feelgoody. Nonetheless, the track record of the Unitarians on abolition and civil rights is laudable and the building does fit nicely into the neighborhood.

The Inauguration and All That

So I did listen to the inauguration the other day while making a late breakfast. I've listened to most of them (as I recall) since I first voted back in 1984 (for Reagan). There were a few clunky lines that stood out (the bitter swill of civil war?!?), and Rev. Lowery's ending rhyme was a bit dumb. Calling for the yellow to be mellow strikes me as perhaps, unintentionally, racist. Overall, though, I was mostly pleased. Oh, and Aretha was just plain awful.

As a strong believer in small government, and after eight years of Republican perfidy on that subject, I wasn't thrilled by his many calls for a larger one. I did expect that, so I wasn't shocked by them. I did like his calls for unity, and strength and all those good things.

What I'm hoping for is that the sheer force of his personality will quiet his critics on the left and drown out the worst critics on the right. I've heard him talk enough about solid, pragmatic solutions to things that I'm not anywhere near writing him off at this early stage. (I'm posting this just after waking up so I'm not getting all wonky and detaily).

So with a prayer on my lips and eyes unblinkered by the sort of idolatry in the video I've already posted, I'm hoping for the best for at least the next year. After that, who can tell?

C'mon, this is creepy

Skip ahead through all the dross to 3:54. I'm sorry, I sort of like the guy so far, but this sort of creepiness ain't helping me. Sure I want to help the Borg Collective and all, but this sort of ickiness makes me shudder. But hey, it's enough to rouse me from my discomfort to post something.

Too Cool

Sure I've already posted an obituary for him today but these are too cool not to post. I never could never have even dreamed of looking as cool as he does in the opening of the second video when he just puts out his cigarette. And then he gets to dance with Cyd Charisse.

No. 6 RIP

And now this? Who's next?

Supposedly Patrick McGoohan was sought to play Gandalf by Peter Jackson but turned it down stating simply he was retired. Good for him but sad for us.

As my friend Evan D. wrote on his post regarding McGoohan's passing, he did shine even in the least of things. I watched "Ice Station Zebra" again recently and he shines, overwhelming everyone, including the lovably hammy Ernest Borgnine, with his almost too rich tones. He did the same thing in "Columbo" several times (he also directed some of the best episodes of that show).

Like Ricardo Montalban, he was married for a long, long time. He married the actress Joan Drummond in 1951, between a rehearsal and a performance of "Taming of the Shrew".

Be seeing you.

Rich Corinthian Leather

Ricardo Montalban, RIP. From marginal ethnic roles (particularly as Asians), to leading roles to cultural icon as Mr. Roarke, and for more importantly for all fanboydom, and Khan Noonien Singh, He was also one of the utterly despicable villains on "Columbo", and actually getting to play a Mexican. In recent years he co-starred in Rodriguez's "Spy Kids" movies (as Antonio Banderas' father, which is pretty cool) and continued to used that super rich voice in commercials.

As a side note, he was married for sixty-three years to Georgianna Young (Loretta Young's sister). That's cooler to me than even playing Khan. RIP.

Icy Steps of Doom

I stepped onto the first and topmost step out of my estate and in a split second between the firing of the controlling neurons and my foot contacting the step I realized that it was not free of ice. A thin, molecular thin, sheet of deadly, deadly ice. The sort that creates and utterly frictionless zone under a lumbering hulk like myself.

With bumping and thumping I ended up in a heap at the foot of the ten or so stairs fronting my home. I knew my head was safe but my back felt broken. i had also winded myself a thing I'd never done before and instantly thought I was paralyzed and would die of asphyxiation at the foot of my home.

I did, though, quickly regain my breath and dragged myself, moaning like a gut shot eland the whole way, up the steps to the front door. I quickly set about terrifying the luminous Mrs. V. by ringing the bell like a mad man.

She came down and called an ambulance. Holding off a bout of nausea, she quickly set about trying to take care of the steps in anticipation of the EMT's arrival. They came, saw they would have to remove me through the back of the home and set about making it so. One of them, though warned, didn't hold onto the railing while returning to his truck and he took a tumble breaking a finger in the process.

All this drama, once I was deposited at the St. Vincent's ER, was followed by several hours of waiting, excruciating pain, a few pills finally, then some X-Rays and eventually a seal of bruised but ok health and a release.

Now I rest, type, watch "Poirot" and contemplate that never again will our steps be icy.

An Unpaved and Vacant Lot

Town of Castleton's Village Hall



Built in 1871, this building was the center of municipal operations for the town of Castleton that once existed as a unique entity along the north shore of Staten Island. Until a few years ago it was one of three remaining village halls that once operated in Staten Island and Queens. Now only the one in Stapleton and another in Queens remain.

In the recent past this once beautiful building, then crumbling, was demolished for safety's sake. The firm that had purchased it to convert into residential units in 1985 had walked away from the expense and responsibility entailed in owning a landmarked property.

All through the earliest days of my childhood this red and slate building had marked the the last leg of the bus trip to my grandmother's house on Henderson Avenue. We'd take the #5 bus from the corner of Victory and Cebra, ride over the hill and get off at Jersey and Richmond Terrace. There'd we'd transfer to the #102 and ride west along the Terrace and turn left on Lafayette and then onto Henderson and my grandma's.

The Village Hall was visible as soon as you turned onto Lafayette and my eyes were usually drawn to it. It was imposing, decayed and had the look of adventure in it. That I, nor my friends, never tried to enter it may seem odd based on the few other adventures I've mentioned but it was far from home by foot and not really in a neighborhood we'd end up in by accident.

Today nothing but an overgrown fenced in lot remains of building.


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Castleton Village Hall from Mike Dominowski's site

Donald Westlake, RIP

Donald Westlake died New Year's Eve. He created the Parker ultra-hardboiled novels and the comic Dortmunder novels as well as other characters and a seemingly bottomless well of short stories.

I'm not as big a fan as several of my friends but the Parker novels that I've read, as well as "Kahawa", have kicked me off my seat. He wrote some of the hardest and most brutal crime stories I've ever encountered. Great stuff and a great loss.


Preview of Upcoming Parker Comic by Darwyn Cooke

Richmond Ice Co.

So I've driven past this building perhaps a million times (no kidding) and I've never noticed it's name or the very cool crumbling cement objects adorning its top. My mother-in-law told me about and that she'd called the Staten Island Museum to let them know they were eroding and in need of preservation or something. Here they are then; the walruses of the long deceased Richmond Ice Co.










WALRUSES










Once the existing concrete structure was part of a larger complex presumably serving Richmond County's many ice needs.

Unfortunately the building is now marked with the dreaded FDNY "do not save in case of a fire" X in box symbol

Too Much Cuteness in One Place

ZooBorns
is one of the most over the top cute pages I've ever seen. It's also really cool. So there, a present to you all.

Merry Christmas! pt. 2

Mrs. V found this on the Daily Mail site.

Merry Christmas ! pt. 1

The Past in Snow and Ice

Here's a lovely stolen set of photos of the falls in Clove Lakes Park in the winter about 1910.

Just Some Quick Then and Now Stapleton Shots

Stapleton was the neighborhood I grew up in and still have a great affinity for even if there's little reason for me to spend much time there anymore. When I was a kid I lived in the library and we regularly shopped in the numerous stores around Tappen Park and along Broad Street up to Targee Street. There was the "Store of a Million Items" and "John's Bargain Store". There was "Wright Toy and Hobby" on Wright
Street and a Chinese restaurant on the second floor of the building next to "Woolworths" (which itself had a great luncheon counter where I always got a filet of fish sandwich without tartar sauce).


Woolworths vs. OZ - Woolworth's closed its American stores in 1997 ending an era of five and dime stores that dated to 1878. I bought so many books, models and other stuff there right up until the end. There were those kids rides where for a quarter a horse or firetruck bounces around sort of aimlessly and gumball machines.



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Later my mother started her long career of community activism in Stapleton with first "The Friends of Stapleton Library" and then the "Stapleton Civic Association" She and the equally late Helen Pose worked hard and often thanklessly to try and stave off the economic death of their town and get the merchants and residents to pitch in.



In 1979 or so she founded the "Stapleton Local Development Corporation", got grant money and got herself and three staffers paid to do the same things on a full time basis. For four years she worked hard at it only to get pushed out by a the head of the board of directors who put his girlfriend in my mom's place. Within a few years that woman messed things up and there were questions of impropriety and badly managed funds. Later directors (as my mother had moved on to way too many other things and the merchants of Stapleton had proven unwilling to make any real efforts to save their community) were better but the group eventually fell moribund and was absorbed into the still vibrant St. George/Tompkinsville LDC.

The only real testimony to the efforts of my mothers and the other "community organizers" of Stapleton back in the seventies and eighties is the beautifully designed brick sidewalks and gazebo at Tappen Park. Recently the park was renovated by the NYC Park's Department but there's none of the foot traffic of the past or the huge fall festivals and flea markets my mother and friends organized and held up through the mid-eighties.

Gazebo and Sidewalks - The beautiful building in the background is the remaining one of two village halls built as local municipal centers. It housed my mother's LDC and Community Board One and several other groups until the District Attorney's office took it over eleven or so years ago. They wanted to be closer to the court house and the public was deprived of a beautiful historic building.

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Chase Bank - This is where my family banked once we moved to Stapleton in 1969




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Staten Island Savings Bank (or whatever it's called these days) - I never went inside this magnificent classically styled building until a few years ago. You should do so and marvel at its beautiful interior and the sanctity and security of banking it was intended to convey.






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More Houses Near Our House

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Prospect and Ellicott


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Prospect and Lafayette


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Two Houses on Park Place


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Thru the trees on Highview

My Neck of the Woods

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Second to the right from the corner: the Vredenburgh Manse

We live along Prospect Avenue in New Brighton near the border, Lafayette Avenue, with West New Brighton (neighborhood of my previously shown family estate). Much of the surrounding neighborhood was built as one of the first commuter neighborhoods for businessmen working in the salt mines of the Wall Street environs. Initially the area was called Brighton Park but it was renamed Hamilton Park by its developer Charles Hamilton. Lining much of Franklin Avenue, Pendleton Place and the surrounding hills are large Victorian era homes. Several have been entered into the national registry of historical homes.


Dominating the neighborhood is the magnificent edifice of Christ Episcopal Church, err, just Christ Church. I need to read more about the history of the church and its parishoners, but suffice it to say, they had money and they weren't hesitant about using it. I missed out on seeing the inside of the church this past Sunday when I skipped an ecumenical Vespers Advent service due to sleepiness but I hope to make it one day soon and report back on it for those who care.


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Over time the neighborhood changed. On the blocks around the initial upscale streets came to be built large multifamily homes and apartment buildings. There are still some wooden ones over on near Sailor Snug Harbor only a few blocks from the church.

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W.S. Pendleton House


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Hamilton Cottage


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Pritchard House - My Favorite House - Tucked away behind lush (or perhaps merely poorly maintained) hedges, this Italianate home sits high on the secluded hills of New Brighton.

RIP Forrest J. Ackerman

Forrest J. Ackerman died and I'm sad. Famous Monsters, nuff said.

The Rest of Port Richmond's Churches

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St. Mary of the Assumption Roman Catholic Church - Richmond Terrace
Seemingly the primary church of Port Richmond's large Mexican population.


View Larger Map Once it had a parish school. I don't have any recollection of it ever being in operation.



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St. Paul's/St. Luke's Lutheran Church - Decker and Catherine - Once the Wasa Lutheran Church, this Swedish congregation changed name over the years and merged with that of St. Paul's Lutheran when it closed in the early seventies. It's where my mother and her family went until she was married. I have her oft mended confirmation Bible on my shelf and one of my aunts is a very active member of this small congregation. It's suffered from the demographic shift of the North Shore like most of the mainline Protestant churches, especially the ones with a strong ethnic component.


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St. Roch's Roman Catholic Church - Port Richmond Avenue



View Larger Map Port Richmond Reformed Church - I've written about this before. It's the oldest congregation on the Island as far as I know. The original building was burned by the British and this one only dates from the eighteenth century. There are very cool seventeenth century headstones in the surrounding churchyard.




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Mar Thoma Church - Faber Street - This new addition to the churches of the neighborhood perfectly reflects the amazing, a pretty cool, changes in the demographics of Staten Island.


View Larger MapTemple Emanu-El - Post Avenue - I think this is the oldest Orthodox Temple on the Island. "The Jewish Community of Staten Island" has some great pictures of the congregation and it's temple. There's an attached school and a light up Star of David on the steeple.






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Faith United Methodist Church - Castleton and Heberton - Faith is one of the results of the Great Methodist Collapse I've mentioned earlier. It's the result of the closing of Kingsley Methodist, Delafield Methodist and their merging with Grace Methodist in Port Richmond located in this beautiful red brick building.




View Larger MapSt. John's Lutheran Church - Jewett Avenue - I don't know anything about this church. I did attend a wedding there 20 years ago but since my church is a member of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and it's a member of the Missouri Synod, it's like the Bloods and Crips. Not very brotherly. It's a pretty red brick building that was once a Methodist church, I think (confirmation later) and has a pretty little cemetery attached.

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Today there are several storefront churches and assorted non-denominational churches in the immediate area. There's also a Pentecostal church and Jehovah Witness Kingdom Hall nearby but for ease I'll say they're in Elm Park and save myself some work.