32 MARCH 29, 2018 RIDGEWOOD TIMES WWW.QNS.COM
OUR NEIGHBORHOOD: THE WAY IT WAS
The fi lthy yet important
history of the Newtown Creek
BY THE OLD TIMER
EDITORIAL@RIDGEWOODTIMES.COM
@RIDGEWOODTIMES
Few waterways were as important
to the development of Queens
and Brooklyn as the Newtown
Creek — the 3.2-mile tributary that’s
more known these days as a heavily
polluted Superfund site.
It was named for the town of
Newtown, one of the fi rst colonial
settlements in Queens. From the mid-
1600s to the mid-1800s, it was a bucolic
waterway surrounded by farmland.
The boats that traversed it were largely
ferries shipping farmers’ goods to
marketplaces in Manhattan.
According to the Environmental
Protection Agency, the colonial creek
and its tributaries — including Whale
Creek, Dutch Kills, Maspeth Creek and
English Kills — “drained the uplands
of western Long Island and fl owed
through wetlands and marshes.” It had
its own ecosystem and was known for
shellfi sh growth; Mussel Island, an
island that once existed where the
Newtown and Maspeth creeks met,
was so named to refl ect the kind of
shellfi sh found there.
The American Industrial Revolution
in the 19th century, however, marked
a reversal of fortune for the Newtown
Creek. According to the Newtown
Creek Alliance, the nation’s fi rst kerosene
refi nery opened on the creek’s
banks in 1854 — followed 13 years later
by the opening of the nation’s fi rst oil
refi nery. These were among the fi rst of
the more than 50 chemical refi neries
that opened up on the creek’s shoreline
The Vernon Avenue Bridge, shown in this 1930 photo, once spanned the Newtown Creek, connecting Vernon
Avenue (present-day Vernon Boulevard) in Long Island City with Manhattan Avenue in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.
The bridge was later torn down and replaced by the Pulaski Bridge.
in the years to come.
The Standard Oil Company — which
began as the Astral Oil Company in
1880 — had, by the end of the 20th
century, more than 100 distilleries
on both sides of the Newtown Creek.
These distilleries were dumping more
than 30,000 gallons of chemical-laden
byproducts into the creek every week,
the Newtown Creek Alliance noted.
At the time, industries thought
nothing of dumping their waste into
Courtesy of the Queens Borough Public Library, Archives, Eugene L. Armbruster Photographs
the Newtown Creek. Now the main artery
feeding an industrial community,
there was little concern about the potential
harm done to the environment,
nor the potential health hazards from
exposure to chemicals.
Heavy industry grew along the
creek in the ensuing decades, and
during the 1920s and 1930s, the Newtown
Creek was dredged and widened
to accommodate bigger barges. By
then, all kinds of industrial businesses
lined the shores. Sugar refi neries, hide
tanners, canneries, copper wiring
producers and even soap makers
joined the refi neries and oil storage
facilities that employed thousands of
people, but at a major ecological cost
that wouldn’t be realized for decades.
Its wetlands and marshes wiped out,
its estuaries sealed off as the industrial
development went on, Newtown Creek
had been reduced to a single-source
waterway. The East River is the only
way for water to fl ow in and out — and,
for decades, it, too had its pollution
problems.
With water unable to circulate, the
pollution in the creek accumulated,
dropping the oxygen levels to zero for
much of the 20th century. This made
the Newtown Creek next to impossible
to maintain aquatic life.
And yet, the situation was even
bleaker.
The city’s sewer system included
combined sewer overfl ow points along
the creek. Raw sewage and wastewater
was dumped into the creek whenever
the water treatment plants hit capacity
during heavy rain events.
The toxic cocktail of human and
industrial waste left the Newtown
Creek in a truly foul state. One didn’t
need to see the oil slicks and other fi lth
Courtesy of the Queens Borough Public Library, Archives, Ralph S. Solecki Photographs
A site in Maspeth looking west toward the Newtown Creek in 1934. Look carefully at the left of the photo and
you’ll see the outline of one of the former Greenpoint gas tanks; both tanks were demolished in 2001.
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