Let’s Talk About the Parts of the City Built on Garbage
^ Ah, yes, Battery Park City – the former and forgotten wheat field of the 1980s…
Thank god the above vista wasn’t a thing in the day and age of instagram – can you imagine the amount of curated pictures taken here? Influencers risking it all crossing the West Side Highway while wearing Reformation dresses being repurposed as a trendy rendition of farmer garb in order to get “the shot”. Breathe a sigh of relief as this won’t be flooding your feed anytime soon: this was way back in the late 70s when Agnes Denes planted two acres of wheat on an unkept landfill off to side of Tribeca, which we now know as the pricy home to Brookfield Place, Battery Park City.
Since the first colonists arrived to Manhattan, New Yorkers have dealt with two problems: lots of garbage and needing more space. At first, garbage was tossed over the city walls or simply thrown into the nearby rivers. But as the population grew, so did the amount of trash. Soon enough, New York had its first sanitation crisis on its hands. The sanitary movement and engineering came together for public health reasons and based most building decisions on how they could best fill the land. Over time, the city cannibalized itself and grew (as seen in this cool map progression) through human waste and infrastructure projects, leading us to presently call countless acres built on waste our home.
So how much of the city are sitting on a trash? Let’s cover some of the heavy hitters.
1. Ellis Island was built on rubble displaced by the Subway – Ellis Island sits on almost 28 acres. Originally, it was 3.3. Those 24 extra acres came about during the late 1890s and were created using landfill from the construction of the modern Subway system, including the excavation for Grand Central Terminal.
2. FDR is built on rubble from WWII England – The FDR, which runs all the way up Manhattan’s Eastern profile, was built upon rubble shipped over from wartime England following WWII. Most of the rubble is from Bristol, an area that was hammered with thousands of German bombs which destroyed nearly 85,000 buildings. In fact, there’s so much rubble that the area between 23rd and 34th street is known as “Bristol Basin“.
3. Riker’s Island is built on ashes and 19th century refuse – In the 1880s when the city needed a bigger jail, it looked to its looming garbage output to get the job done. The Street Cleaning Department said it could provide about 50 acres of ashes and “street dirt” per year…and the project was just as horrifying as it sounds. A quote from an employee who worked on the project: “The rats grew so numerous and so large that the department imported dogs in an effort to eliminate the rats. The dogs were not fed by the authorities but lived solely on the rats. Despite this, the rats continued to multiply. Gases were constantly exploding through the soil covering and bursting into flames; in the summer the ground resembled a sea of small volcanos, all breathing smoke and flames.”
4. Battery Park City is built on dirt from the World Trade Center – In the 1960s, the framework was being laid for “the new town” on the Hudson, which would be formed using the land excavated from the World Trade Center site during the 1970s. This became one of the most expensive and developed districts of the city; most importantly, it brings in millions in tax revenue per year. The land, that was literally created from nothing, functions as a land lease owned by the city, and every condo pays their share of the land lease rent in addition to their property taxes, which goes straight into the city’s coffers.
5. Second Avenue subway and LIRR Tunnel under the East River are currently fueling multiple projects around the city – The Second Avenue Subway project produced a lot of refuse – the 72nd Street stop alone lead to 375,000 cubic yards of excavated stone. In addition to this project, the LIRR tunnel, and the extension of the 7 line to the far West Side have or will have produced millions of tons of refuse. Two of the major projects receiving the waste are the Ferry Point Golf Course in the Bronx and Brooklyn Bridge Park. Both of these projects got approval based upon their economic value to the city and ability to provide public space for recreation.
6. Governor’s Island was greatly expanded by the Lexington Avenue subway line excavation – In the early 1900s, Governor’s Island went from a modest 90 acres to its current size of 172 acres, thanks to the muck dredged up from the construction of the 4/5/6 up Lexington Avenue. 182,000 cubic yards of fill were carted over, enough to fill 1,100 subway cards.