If you don't know what I'm talking about, Mr. Kilgannon is a Metro reporter for the NYT who lately has been writing stories that jar my memory.
Mr. Kilgannon is from Nassau county, and to his credit, he's been able to convince his editors that Queens, despite being an "Outer Borough"—outer, although connected to Manhattan by two bridges a vehicular tunnel, along with several rail tunnels—that there are stories that can come from there. This is refreshing, and just another example of how the NYT has become a bit less starchy and is willing to see where their MetroCard can take them.
Quite honestly, there was a bit of a preview to today's story about Willets Point when Mr. Kilgannon a few weeks ago posted via Twitter some color photos of workers from the Willets Point section that is the subject of an online and print story in today's paper. Another good reason to buy a newspaper. I felt there was a story coming, but didn't know what. No one troops around Willets Point junk yards without something in mind, either legal or illegal.
Willets Point is not just a story today, it is a photo essay, in a separate 12-page section, with text by Mr. Kilgannon and Andrea Salcedo, and photos—tintype photos—by photographers from the Penumbra Foundation, Geoffrey Berliner and Jolene Lupo, and Todd Hessler from the NYT.
There is a section that explains the tintype process that renders black and white photos that develop a positive image almost instantly with the scene reversed, like a negative. Thus, when you look at the photos in the section, wording, etc is mirror image. The workers and owners from the section are mechanics who work within the junkyards fixing nearly anything automotive.
The photos render the subjects in such a nostalgic light that you have to remember they are photos taken in 2019. Without the words, you might think you're gazing at something from the 1930s, nowhere near Citifield, the National Tennis Center and jet aircraft overhead from LaGuardia airport
This section of Queens, Willets Point has long been filled with junk yards—salvage yards—and repair shops. But the acreage is shrinking. Development is finally coming.
Once upon a time the stacks of junked autos approached at least two stories, maybe higher. Cranes were used to stack the autos. There were once so many salvage yards that the owners encroached onto city property and made a street disappear under junked metal and plastic.
The city got after them, and pushed the yards back to their proper boundaries, but the presence was still there. Police detectives occasionally checked the inventories for stolen vehicles.
Mr. Kilgannon's and Andrea Salcedo's text is about the repair shops that are populated with a decidedly immigrant population, whose continued presence in the area is facing extinction. Sixty acres of land, near commuter and subway transportation, is what makes city planners and developers want in their Christmas stockings.
But for me, it is the map that is part of the story that opens the vault. It is a great map that clearly shows the bodies of water that surround the area: Flushing Creek, and the much larger Flushing Bay.
Since I grew up and lived about two miles east of all this until I was 43, I am familiar with the history.
I've seen maps that for some reason have relabeled Flushing Creek as Flushing River. This is like calling the Knicks a basketball team. The word river can give you the connotation that something flows. Flushing Creek doesn't flow. It is a mass of sulfurous jell-o so rancid and goppy that you wouldn't need to be the son of God to walk on it.
The section of Flushing I grew up in is called Murray Hill, two blocks from the Murray Hill train Station on the LIRR Port Washington line, a train station whose platform is so short that only four cars of any train that stops there open. There is no way to make the platform longer.
Why there is even a stop there might be a mystery, but I think it has to do with something regarding a president of the LIRR and someone connected with the Murray estate, a large tract of land that once housed a mansion, which, to no surprise, Mrs. Murray lived in. Long gone and is now the Murray Hill Shopping Center.
Ever since the 1950s I would take the LIRR train into the city to the family flower shop with my father. In those days, the LIRR rolling stock had windows that actually opened, inasmuch as there was no air conditioning. It's not quite true that the cars were so old there were arrow marks in the sides from Indian attacks, but they never looked new to me.
When the train cleared Flushing Main Street the next stops west could have been Elmhurst, or even Corona, two stops that no longer exist. The route went right through Willets Point and the Flushing Creek was visible. If you didn't see it, you certainly smelled it. And there in the creek was a fair sized rowboat, or dinghy that was tied to a piling. It was dissolving in the goo.
Low tide was the smelliest. You wouldn't think a strip of rancid water could be affected by the moon, but it was. I passed that spot for decades and always would marvel that the boat, or what was still left, was still there. Remarkable to me.
Even after I moved away in 1992, there were times I had to take that train to say Bayside. Passing that spot always afforded a view of what was now an even further shrinking of that boat—but I could tell it was still there!
Mr. Kilgannon's piece tells the story of the city's saga to get the junkers out. I've heard about plans for the area for decades, but the land is still undeveloped. The problem with that area of Queens, Willets Point and College Point, is that the water table is very high. The ground can't support much weight on it.
They did mange to build Shea Stadium and now Citifield and now the tennis stadiums with no apparent sinking. They seem to have licked the problem.
Umpteen years ago, just east of the area there was a small airport, Flushing Airport, used by small private planes. Development was stalled for decades because they couldn't build on he land. Again, they seem to have solved the problem and that area of College Point is quite developed, even to the point of being where the NYT is printed.
As a kid I remember the landfill that was used to build LaGuardia airport had trouble keeping the control tower up. The tower sank. Eventually, that story too ended, and the control tower seems to be okay these days.
Rikers Island will soon be up for grabs. Nothing above 150', or someone's TV and sink will be coming onto your snack tray. As Roger Miller once sang: "everything changes a little and should; the good ain't forever, and the bad ain't for good."
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