Amtrak’s trains running along the former yard in the early 1990’s. Today this area is covered by high rise buildings.
A long time ago, a pussy-grabbing con man and his investor friends bought the former N.Y. Central RR rail yards which once lay just south of the freedom tunnel. The tracks here were abandoned in the 1980s when Conrail stopped servicing the area for some shortsighted reason. All yard tracks were pulled and the land became an open field of tall weeds and, along the water, shattered remains of piers and float bridges.
As we all know, Amtrak revived this line for service into Penn Station from the north, and in the later 1990s, the real estate people bought air rights from Amtrak to connect their property to the streets of the upper west side. In doing so, they were able to build the foundations for their buildings above the tracks.
Today, Amtrak still runs through this new tunnel. A single trackway/space runs next to this tunnel devoid of life. A large space was created and rumored to have been a planned station for this transit route which never came to be.
So far as I’m concerned, there is only one bridge in NYC that matters. Only one bridge worth climbing. Only one bridge shrouded in more ghost stories and urban legends than you could fit into a 200 page issue of Weird NJ. Entire movies have been written about this bridge. Hell Gate Bridge. This is its story. (more…)
While exploring, it is not uncommon to come across old graffiti. however, it is uncommon to come across graffiti inside of a building that is at least 20 years old.
Witness the photos above, and get an education in handstyle circa 1985 – to find a room that is still decorated like this in the year 2005 is utterly baffling.
Greenpoint terminal was a big enough set of buildings that you could go over and over and over and still find new things. On this night we accessed a room that looked as though a squatter was living in it. Upon closer inspection though it appears the room was used as a local hang out for kids growing up in the area in the 1980s, and judging from the style of graffiti, may later have been used by some punk rock squatters. (more…)
This is another MTA exhaust ventilation fan plant construction site. This project, costing nearly $30 million dollars, involves the expansion of yet another preexisting fan plant to better remove smoke and increase air circulation within an MTA Subway tunnel. (more…)
In the spring of 2001, the MTA proposed the construction of this fan plant. The construction consists of a large hole, 70 feet deep, ripped open cut-and-cover style below a local Manhattan street. This location had previously contained an MTA subway emergency exit with an extra ancillary space constructed specifically for future utility use such as this. (more…)
the first time I ever entered this drain, it was a cold rainy day. The water level was far too high to navigate this tunnel without ending up with some very cold very wet feet. So we came back one night when it was a little dryer, and found that despite the absolute blackness of this tunnel (no lights anywhere, no lights coming in from the manholes above), the tunnel was not without color. The bottom of the tunnel floor was thick with a golden brown sediment, perhaps some type of soil that had run off into this drain from some of the pipes and smaller drains that feed into this very large (and very smelly) drain.
So we’re driving through the ghetto and we come upon this shithole. It’s a series of abandoned warehouse buildings that are basically gutted. There is utterly nothing left sans graffiti (of good quality) and one or two signs. Oh, and let’s not forget the coal silos, abandoned freight tracks, and 2 nice bashed up stolen cars.
