I was equally terrible at printmaking, yet found the process enjoyable, and could often be found in the print shop dropping acid—that is metal plates into acid baths to etch them for printing on an old timey press. Despite my lack of abilities, I think learning the process gave me a special appreciation for the craft. There is just something exceptionally lovely about the emotion that a print can convey, especially in the realm of railroading. From the light that filters through a massive train station window to the belches of smoke erupting from a locomotive, the subject matter provides a veritable playground for the skilled printmaker.

Enter Joseph Pennell. More than just skilled in the arts of printmaking, he was a master of the craft. Although his work illustrating articles for Harper’s and The Century Magazine took him around the world, his prints of railroading subjects in Pennsylvania (his home) and New York (the city that inspired him and eventually became his home) are especially memorable. Working mainly in the techniques of intaglio, aquatint, and lithography, his body of work captures notable moments in American railroading history—from the construction of New York’s Pennsylvania Station and Hell Gate Bridge, to lovely views of Grand Central Terminal, and Philadelphia’s long-gone Broad Street Station.

So what exactly goes into a print? For intaglio [above left], the process consists of coating a metal plate with a waxy substance, and then etching lines (backward, as the print is a reverse of the plate) with sharp tools into that wax. From there, the plate is placed in an acid bath, where the exposed lines are “bitten” into the plate. The wax is later removed, and the plate can be coated with ink and printed through a press to yield a version on paper. Aquatint works similarly, but allows for gradations in tone on the metal plate beyond the linework of intaglio. Lithography [above right] is a departure from the previous processes in that the artist uses a waxy crayon to draw an image onto a stone plate. Acid is likewise used, but here it creates a surface on the stone through a chemical reaction which will either hold or repel ink from which a print can be produced. While the acid process of intaglio requires drawings made of thin lines and points, lithographs are not constrained by this, and each technique can be used to evoke a completely different mood in the final print.

Pennell’s early printmaking work was predominantly in the technique of intaglio, but he later came to prefer the process of lithography. No matter which technique he used, Pennell had an incredible talent of conveying textures and emotions through his artful linework. He zealously attended to detail and was quite the perfectionist—trusting no one but himself to pull prints from his plates, and subsequently destroying his own plates after 50 printings to prevent the possibility of anyone finding them and attempting to print degraded images from them later.

Although Pennell’s work holds both artistic and historic merit, from today’s lens the man himself held many ethically problematic opinions. In fact, were he alive and working today, it is quite possible that he would have been rightfully “cancelled” for his racism. Yet in the time period in which he were alive, Pennell’s opinions were likely commonplace. As such, I think it is important to view his work in historical context. He was one of a long line of men who felt that art institutions should solely be the space of white males, and in his autobiography, The Adventures of an Illustrator, describes the admittance of Henry Ossawa Tanner to his “white [art] school” as “the coming of the n—–.” After detachedly recounting the time when Tanner was dragged out onto Broad Street and mock crucified to his easel (which Pennell may have been an active participant in), Pennell opines, “curiously, there never has been a great Negro or a great Jew artist in the history of the world.” Apart from the noteworthy moments he captures in his prints, Pennell’s work also encapsulates a sentiment of a world that we continue to strive to move beyond.

Creator: Pennell, Joseph (creator)

http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/ppmsca.50571

If you enjoyed this article, consider making a donation to the Friends of the Tanner House, the organization looking to restore Henry Ossawa Tanner’s house in Philadelphia.

Beyond such high construction costs, the railroad’s stock was also prone to manipulation, and one of its presidents even went on to defraud investors with phony stock, absconding to France after being caught. It got bad enough that the Harlem’s stock certificates were seen as bearing little value beyond than the paper they were printed on. Add on the dangers of the road—safety too was one of those “figure it out as you go along” things—and you end up with a company with an absolutely abysmal reputation with the public. Thus when Cornelius Vanderbilt commenced his takeover, it was generally well perceived, with the Commodore’s shrewd business reputation restoring credibility to the beleaguered Harlem. Though Vanderbilt gets much of the credit for the early success of these rails, there was another man in the background who deserves some credit in how the Harlem truly came to be, and even how the rails are aligned to this day—Gouverneur Morris, Jr.

Gouverneur Morris, Jr.

Born in Morrisania in 1813 into the influential Morris family, Gouverneur’s uncle was a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and his father was one of the authors of the Constitution. The family owned much of what is today the Bronx, then the Manor of Morrisania in Westchester County. Only a toddler when his father passed, young Gouverneur was sole heir to nearly half of the original manor’s landholdings. It was under his ownership that the land would transition from sparsely populated farmland to a town of thousands. Morris envisioned a center of heavy industry, and with access to deep water, a vast network of shipping by sea and by land.

Morris was convinced that a railroad was integral to these dreams. He was an early backer of the New York and Albany Railroad, the road that the New York and Harlem was supposed to join up with at the banks of the Harlem River. But when the New York and Albany failed to materialize, Morris threw his support behind the New York and Harlem, which was eventually granted the charter to expand northward where the other had failed. Wielding significant power due to his family’s ownership of an existing bridge over the Harlem River, Morris facilitated the rights for the Harlem to use it to cross into what was then Westchester, and he, along with several of his family members, made deals with the Harlem for land to build ever northward.

The Harlem reached Williamsbridge in 1842, and shortly thereafter Morris opened a private rail line across his estate, connecting to the newly arrived Harlem near what is now Melrose. He referred to this line as the Morrisania Branch Railroad, and the first commodity it carried was milk from the dairies on his farmland to the city. During the swill milk crisis, Morris and several other nearby dairymen including Thompson Decker (whose business would eventually become a part of Sheffield Farms through merger) were proponents of “pure milk” and lobbied the Harlem and other railroads for additional milk trains through upper Westchester and beyond. For decades milk remained an important commodity of the Harlem, with the famed Rutland Milk, or “Rut Milk” train, and shipments to Sheffield Farms’s expansive gravity milk plant near Melrose Junction.

Land agreements between Morris family members and the New York and Harlem Railroad.

Founding Morrisania

By 1848 New York City was continuing to grow, and many men dreamed of escaping tenements and landlords, for a land they owned themselves. The Harlem’s expansion opened a new opportunity for such men—the ability to remain at their city jobs, but to likewise own their own homes in the “country.” A committee of families sharing such sentiment was formed at Military Hall in the Bowery, and led by Jordan Mott (who had previously purchased land from the Morrises to build his foundry in the area now named for him, Mott Haven), secured the purchase of 200 acres from Gouverneur Morris. After planning a grid of streets and reserving a piece of land for a rail depot, school, and public square, those 200 acres yielded 167 plots of land. At a subsequent committee meeting cards with each of the numbers 1 to 167 were placed in a box. The men each drew a card, and the number shown indicated their order in picking from the array of lots. These men in their New Village, eventually to be named Morrisania, were the Harlem Railroad’s first suburban commuters. Their new train stop saw fifteen trains a day, and the yearly price of commutation was $37.50 to ride any train, or at a discounted $30 a year to be restricted to ride one specifically designated commutation train in the morning and evening. Within several years a depot proper was constructed, and George Tremper was appointed the first Station Agent.

Gouverneur Morris would continue to sell off portions of his estate, and the town of Morrisania, and the villages like Melrose, Port Morris, and Claremont within would all continue to grow. Within the first year 68 homes would rise, and within two decades of Morris’s first sale to the committee in the Bowery there were 2,356 homes. Many heavy industries did pop up in the vicinity of Port Morris—beyond the coal and lumber yards German immigrants established a handful of breweries, and by the turn of the century pianos were rolling along the rails from an array of factories—but the dream of being New York City’s primary deep water port never materialized. Noteworthy ships such as the steamer Great Eastern did approach its waters, and the Morrisania Branch provided excursion passenger service for those curious to catch a glimpse of it.

In his History of Morrisania, resident and local historian Myron Finch’s colorful recollections of living adjacent to the Harlem mention a yard of six switches and a turntable at Melrose Junction, with four passenger trains a day over the branch to Port Morris with a connection to the ferry to Rikers Island, although this service was likely short lived. Meanwhile, the Harlem proper, although an integral part of their commuter village, was simultaneously seen as a “slaughter ground” by residents due to the derailments, collisions, and death it brought. Mishaps were unnervingly frequent, from trains colliding into the rear of another while they discharged passengers, to near misses of almost careening off the open drawbridge on the Harlem River. While aboard one train that derailed in the Yorkville Tunnel, Finch recalled:

Cars [were] thrown across both tracks in a zig-zag direction, from under which we were compelled to crawl out as best we could, in pursuit of daylight! It was an exciting scene in the darkness of that tunnel and one well calculated to make us feel how providentially we had been preserved from a horrid death.

These accidents led to new rules regulating speed, signaling, and the offloading of passengers—an early example of the old adage that every railroad rule is written in blood.

Morrisania Branch to Port Morris Branch

The Morrisania Branch Railroad quickly grew beyond shipments of milk and began carrying freight from the industries popping up around Port Morris. Marble, plaster, wood, and coal were all commodities moving across the branch, heading to locations along the New York and Harlem and beyond. A large grain elevator would eventually be constructed near Melrose, and the line would add two more yards to handle all of the traffic. Specially designed cars with oak frames and hinged trap doors on the bottom were ordered to carry coal. Even the foundry that produced the grand iron dome for the United States Capitol building could be found along the branch. According to lore, the iron for the dome was loaded onto railcars at the Janes & Kirtland Foundry’s industry track, taking a short jaunt down to the port to be loaded onto a ship for the longer journey to Washington DC.

Morris sold the his branch to the Harlem Railroad in 1853 for $118,000, where it subsequently became known as the Port Morris Branch. The original routing to Port Morris was at surface level along the perimeter of the Mary’s Park estate (the future St. Mary’s Park), but was upgraded during the railroad’s massive electrification project around 1905. At that time all remaining grade crossings were eliminated by sinking the track below the streets, and a tunnel was constructed to take the line underneath St. Mary’s Park. A massive power house was constructed by the waterside at Port Morris, twin to the one that still stands at Glenwood. This plant provided the power for the newly electrified Harlem Division. At its height, the branch had three yards—one at each end in Melrose and Port Morris, and another smaller yard at the approximate center along Westchester Avenue.

Ultimately, the branch’s unwieldy zig zag orientation as trains switched from the Harlem to the Hudson at Mott Haven, coupled with drainage issues and low height restrictions as a result of the 1905 track sinking would lead to its demise. The last trains would operate over the line in the late 90s, with the Oak Point Link superseding it upon opening in 1998. The derailment of a 125 car freight bound for Port Morris just a month before the Link opened highlighted the problematic nature of the branch—snarling traffic near Mott Haven blocked all three lines of Metro-North from accessing Manhattan. Simply antiquated, the branch unable to meet the needs of the modern era, and as-is was detrimental to the area’s burgeoning passenger traffic. The Port Morris Branch was officially abandoned in 2003, a final end to over 150 years of freight service.

These days, freight of any sort is a rarity on the Harlem. The final customer in the Bronx receives a shipment of a single carload around every three months, serviced by CSX.

Vanderbilt’s Ruse

Gouverneur Morris Jr. served as a Vice President of the New York and Harlem Railroad for several years, and was a partner in the firm Morris, Miller, and Schuyler, which built the Harlem’s “Albany Extension” from Dover Plains to Chatham (while Morris and Miller both had rail stops named for them, Schuyler was the aforementioned crooked president who sold phony stock, and thus missed out). Nearly two decades after selling his Morrisania Branch, Morris played an integral part in Cornelius Vanderbilt’s plans to link the Harlem with the Hudson River Railroad by chartering the Spuyten Duyvil and Port Morris Railroad (contrary to popular belief, the Port Morris Branch was never a part of the SD&PM). The move was designed to raise little suspicion, as Vanderbilt had not yet taken over the Hudson River Railroad, and if the Commodore himself had made moves to preemptively connect it to the Harlem, it would have gotten people talking! Thus Gouverneur Morris played an important role in bringing the Hudson into Grand Central through Mott Haven, an orientation that continues to this day.

Throughout his life, railroads remained one of Morris’s primary endeavors, and he served on the boards of several roads, as well as holding the presidency of the Vermont Valley Railroad. Although proud of the workingman’s village he helped create, Morris never saw himself as a city dweller, and was reportedly disappointed when Morrisania was annexed by New York City in 1874. He retired to Bartow-on-the-Sound, which was then a part of Pelham, now known as City Island (it too was annexed, albeit after Morris’s passing). Despite his accomplishments to railroading, Morris’s New York Times obituary consisted of 168 words about himself and his offspring, with a further 214 words devoted to his more famous father. Yet without Gouverneur Morris Jr., the New York and Harlem Railroad may never have crossed the banks of the Harlem River, nor reached Columbia County. Thus more than a century later, his indispensable contributions to the Harlem, and to the Bronx, are duly noted upon this page.

I hope you’re enjoying our recent series of posts covering the history of the Bronx. I had intended for this article to be published quite a while ago, but managed to get an appointment to view Gouverneur Morris Jr.’s papers at the New York Historical Society. His meticulous records provide some of the interesting tidbits found in today’s post, including the data on the types of freight carried and where they were delivered.

The Port Morris Branch has been a topic of interest for me for quite a while, likely because there seems to be so little written about it. I’ll be continuing with the theme of the history of the Bronx, and focusing on the Port Morris Branch, along with the real story of the Spuyten Duyvil and Port Morris Railroad, in the next few posts—so stay tuned!

As a nice primer to the era, today I present a Harlem Line employee timetable from 1878, covering the area from Grand Central to Mott Haven. By this time the Harlem’s street-running trains (many still pulled by horses) in lower Manhattan had become a separate and distinct service, and the Hudson and New Haven had been united with the Harlem in the first Grand Central. You’ll see references to the Spuyten Duyvil and Port Morris Junction, or what we’re more familiar with as Mott Haven Junction today. The story of the SD&PM will figure prominently in our upcoming articles, but the short explanation is that it provided the integral link that brought the Hudson River Railroad into Grand Central Depot, beginning the process of launching that road into prominence, and relegating the Harlem on its own tracks (case in point, when the electric division was established, Grand Central to Mott Haven became part of the Hudson, with the Harlem “starting” beyond that point).

While seeing the times of trains is certainly fascinating, the gold is really in the rules of the road. From Hudson being identified by the color yellow, and the Harlem by green, to the antiquated signaling rules, there’s plenty of delightful little tidbits to find throughout. Roger had not made his big debut yet, it was okay to acknowledge with simply an “all right.” And detonating signals, or torpedoes, served a real purpose beyond sticking them on the rail to celebrate an old timer’s retirement (this yougin’ may have just dated herself…).

Take a read, and let us know in the comments which rules of the road you find most interesting!

Today’s Botanical Garden station has the honor of having the most name changes of any station along the Harlem. Although there are a few stations that have had two different names, Botanical Garden has had four within its 150 or so years of existence. Initially starting off with the name of Jerome Park, the station served the race course of the same name, which opened September 25, 1866. The course was a popular venue, hosting the first Belmont Stakes in 1867, and the first outdoor polo match in the United States in 1876. Upon opening the closest station for rail access was Fordham, but the Jerome Park station was established shortly thereafter, providing at least a walkable trip to the course.

Nonetheless, the walk from Jerome Park was still uphill and about a mile in length, so the establishment of alternate methods of access were considered for several years. An initial attempt to build a railway connecting the Harlem to the racetrack failed in 1876 due to litigation regarding the chosen route. A second attempt was made in 1880, this time successful, and the 1.67 mile road was constructed in a total of 34 days, opening on May 29th. President Leonard Jerome took fifty well-to-do invitees on a special opening excursion on the road that morning, departing Grand Central at 11 AM, and arriving in time for a fancy lunch at the course’s clubhouse.

The new partially elevated tracks ran to a small depot that had not yet been completed behind the track’s grandstand, with a wooden bridge connecting the two structures. For the opening of the line, a simple platform greeted the esteemed guests. After a lunch filled with toasts to good health and the celebration of the new line, the guests returned to their train for a 2 PM departure. All-in-all, it seemed to be a rather chaste celebration in comparison to the boozy excursion that marked the opening of the line to White Plains.

Map of the route of the Jerome Park Railway, highlighted in purple, extending from the Harlem just beyond the current Botanical Garden station.

Race day through trains were operated from Grand Central Depot with a fare of 60 cents round trip (20 cents more than a round trip to Jerome Park on the Harlem proper). Decoration Day (referred to as Memorial Day today) was an extremely popular day for the races, and over ten thousand people crammed Grand Central Depot to board trains, with two-thirds of them going either to Jerome Park, or to pay their respects at the Woodlawn Cemetery. The crowd at the depot was so large that extra police were summoned, at one point barring further patrons from entering. The two main ticket offices had lines that were so long, a third impromptu office was set up to sell tickets, but even that was not enough to accommodate the throng. Over 4,500 tickets were sold for the 1:45, 2:10, and 2:30 through trains to the raceway, and many other tickets were sold to Fordham for those who could not get onboard one of the specials.

This first day of opening to the public essentially set the tone for the just over one decade of existence of this branch. It was extremely popular, yet generally reviled due to the massive crowds and the inability of the infrastructure to accommodate them. 4,500 tickets were sold on those first specials, yet across the three trains there were only 2,160 seats. A less-than-happy rider recalled that on one trip “[people were] packed into the cars until they were so uncomfortably crowded that ladies and even strong, robust men almost had the life crushed out of them.” People would get extremely irate, write angry letters to both the editor and to the Commodore, yet would forget about these troubles in the off-season and be back to ride the trains again in the spring. All this despite lines extending from ticket booths all the way out the depot, onto the sidewalk, and around the corner, massive throngs of people, and late trains that sometimes even missed part of the races. As one letter writer concluded, “Commodore Vanderbilt does not care in the least what anybody says about his management while he is comfortable in the certainty that they can do nothing.”

Although some of the blame realistically could be placed on the Harlem for their operation of the trains, especially in regard to on time performance, there was much outside their control. Initial plans for the Jerome Park Railway called for a double tracked line, though it was never constructed this way. A second track only existed at the end of the line near the depot for the racetrack. Without additional tracks to run on, it was largely impossible for the Harlem to increase the amount of service and end the overcrowding problem that plagued the line from its inception. Complaints were plentiful enough that an announcement was made in 1887 that work would soon begin to double track the line and create more sidings near the track to allow for additional service, but these plans never came to fruition. As time ticked on, it became increasingly obvious that the Jerome Park Racetrack would not be around much longer.

The beginning of the end for the Jerome Park Railway was the closure of the raceway as the new site for a new reservoir for the city. The site had been identified as the best place for the reservoir around 1886, yet was subject to negotiations for the acquisition of the property. The race track finally closed after the 1894 season, and became property of the city on January 1, 1895. The railway branch was eventually leased to John B. McDonald, a contractor that had worked on the building of the IRT subway, and was hired to work on the excavation of the area around the reservoir. McDonald used the line, along with an extra four miles of temporary trackage that he constructed extending over the Harlem’s tracks out the area near Parkchester, to fill in the marshlands for development.

Back of an old photo

Back of an old photo

Back of an old photo

Images from the excavation for the Jerome Park Reservoir, utilizing the tracks of the Jerome Park Railway.

Highlighted in red, part of the temporary line that John B. McDonald constructed for the dumping of excavated material. This line extended four miles through Bronx Park and following along the Pelham Parkway to the marshlands.

Lying disused for several years, Bronx Borough President Louis Haffen ordered the remainder of the branch’s tracks to be torn up across Webster Avenue on May 6th, 1906, and expected the section between Willow Avenue and Bronx Park to be removed the day afterward. Haffen had accused some “mystery opposition” of stopping previous plans to remove the tracks, and fully expected the Harlem to object to the removal… yet no further objection ever came. Just 26 years after its construction, the Jerome Park Railway was officially dead.

As for the station along the Harlem proper, around 1887 Jerome Park was renamed Bedford Park after the neighborhood it was located, likely due to confusion with the branch itself. Just a few years later it was again renamed to Bronx Park, reflecting the recently opened park alongside it, where the Botanical Garden was established. Timetables often included a notation that Bronx Park was the location of the Botanical Garden, and eventually it just became easier to outright rename the station yet again to its current iteration—Botanical Garden.

In New York City, the firm of Ames & Rollinson was noted for their work in the field. Around the 1930s, hand illuminated diplomas were their bread and butter—twenty-five artisans churned out over 10,000 diplomas each year, most of which were printed on traditional calfskin vellum. The company also produced many other unique and special documents, including the $25,000 prize check given to Charles Lindbergh from Raymond Orteig’s New York to France non-stop flight challenge, award certificates given to American Telephone & Telegraph Company employees that showed devotion by sticking to their posts during fires, floods, or gun battles, and an array of bound folders commemorating business executives upon their deaths.

In lieu of any established name for said documents, I began referring to them in my mind as “death notes.” Typically, when an executive, president, or board member of a prominent company passed away, the board of said company recognized their efforts and achievements in the minutes of their next meeting. The transcript for that portion of the meeting was then sent to the artisans over at Ames & Rollinson, who produced an illuminated and bound copy to be presented to the next of kin. No expense was spared for these commemorative folders—they were bound in the traditional Moroccan style with a gilt tooled and dyed goatskin cover, a watered silk doublure, sheep or calfskin pages, and illuminated with either Italian gold or French platinum leaf. The resulting book would then be signed by a representative of the company before being sent off to usually the deceased executive’s wife.

Ames & Rollinson created documents like these for a wide array of notable names, including Henry Morton Stanley, J. Pierpont Morgan, William Tecumseh Sherman, Walter P. Chrysler, George Pullman, and Chauncey Depew… whose original “death note” recently came into my possession. Commissioned by the New York Central Railroad Company, the Michigan Central Railroad Company, and the Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago, and St. Louis Railway Company, the ten page document provides a brief biography of Depew, along with a heartfelt tribute, and a listing of all of the board members for each of the railroad companies. Along with the folder is the original letter written by railroad secretary Edward Stephenson to Depew’s widow May Eugenie Palmer when the book was mailed to her.

Born in Peekskill on April 3, 1824, Depew was a graduate of Peekskill Military Academy and Yale University. Admitted to the New York State bar in 1858, Depew operated a law practice in Peekskill. Around the time that Cornelius Vanderbilt came calling to offer him the position as attorney for the New York & Harlem Railroad, Depew had already been offered the position of US Minister to Japan. According to lore, when Depew told Vanderbilt about how the resident minister position offered better compensation, the brusque Vanderbilt retorted, “Railroads are the career for a young man; there is nothing in politics. Don’t be a damned fool.” And that is how Robert B. Van Valkenburgh became the US Minister to Japan, and Chauncey Depew became a railroad man.

When Depew started at the Harlem in 1866, Vanderbilt’s railroad holdings consisted of only around two hundred and fifty miles of territory. Ultimately, Depew would end up overseeing a massive railroad system of over twenty thousand miles as President and Chairman of the Board of the New York Central Lines. Depew’s legacy has been commemorated in the village of Depew in Erie County (where today you’ll find Amtrak’s station for Buffalo), several streets including Depew Place outside Grand Central and Depew Street along the Harlem in Pleasantville, and in a unique old manuscript, which I share with you today.

Angel created a nearly 60,000 image strong visual time capsule of New York City—his photos of the old Pennsylvania Station, of Mott Haven yard, and of the dismantling of the elevated structures carrying subways over Manhattan show how things used to be. I am intrigued by the little details of streetscapes and of people waiting for trains, and wonder how he reached some of his lofty vantage points—he must surely have managed the cupola of the New York Central Building to capture the top of Grand Central before the Pan Am building was constructed, and scaled public housing projects in Marble Hill to photograph the old station there.

https://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/ppmsca.

https://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/ppmsca.

https://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/ppmsca.70564

Angel also seemed captivated by humans in unsuspecting or even vulnerable positions, and there were times that I, as the viewer, was slightly distraught in gazing upon the voyeuristic images, moments that perhaps should never have been captured at all. From men gazing through peepholes at live nude shows, passed out individuals being unceremoniously hefted into paddywagons, or women tearfully attempting to hide from the world, Angel captures an underbelly of New York that I am unaccustomed to seeing.

A contact sheet of photographs from September 1959. Photos include the 59th Street subway and Pennsylvania Station.

That dark line of thought becomes even murkier when one learns more about the man himself. It is hard to deny that Anthony Angel, although clearly an intelligent and talented individual, suffered from mental illness. Institutionalized for a suicide attempt and later discharged from the army for medical reasons, Angel was found by both to suffer from delusions (“dementia praecox, paranoid type” may have been diagnosed today as schizophrenia). He was ritualistic—only venturing out from his apartment at 2 PM every day to capture his photos, later returning to process film and haphazardly generate contact sheets. Despite his obsession with chronological organization, the finer details—removing the dust and hair from the negatives, or even making sure they were not backwards or upside down, were lacking. When he wasn’t out photographing, Angel was creating patent applications for commercially useless inventions, or writing hateful, often antisemitic, letters to governors, senators, supreme court judges, and even the FBI. He believed that the communists, perverts, corrupt judges, or whatever demon du jour was out to get him—paranoid delusions fully on display.

Although photography may have been an outlet for these delusions, Angel’s work reflected his often neurotic mindset. His surreptitious captures of women and of people from afar mark him as an awkward outsider, a recluse unwilling or simply unable to genuinely interact with others, yet inserting himself into their sometimes private moments. His comic-strip-style printed sheets of image sequences seem more cinematic than photographic, with Angel playing the scene director, completely detached from the mayhem of the street fight in front of him. Even his array of self portraits, often captured at the end of each roll of film, reflect the inner turmoil of his psyche—alternating between goofy to serious to pained and even enraged.

https://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/ppmsca.70815

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Self portraits of Angelo Rizzuto, aka Anthony Angel

Despite the problematic nature of the individual, Angel’s captures are undeniably valuable for those wanting a glimpse of New York nearly seventy years ago, especially the railroading infrastructure that appeared in so many photos. But what exactly was it that drew him to these places? Were his visits to Grand Central and wanderings along Park Avenue simply a byproduct of living in close proximity? Was it only fortuity that Angel’s paranoid letter writing spree coincided with the final years of Pennsylvania Station, which he stopped to photograph while on the way to his post box across the street? Or was there some genuine interest in the subject matter—a recollection of his youth where his father served as a construction contractor for the Union Pacific railroad? Beyond his stated intentions to publish a modern day sequel to Stokes’ Iconography of Manhattan Island, any further insight into his motivations or artistic intention were taken to his grave.

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A small fraction of Angel’s work has been digitized by the Library of Congress and can be previewed online. Much of the credit for this work coming to light belongs to Michael Lesy, who encountered the images at the LOC decades ago and compiled the majority of the information we know today about Angelo Rizzuto.

Special thanks to Barbara Orbach Natanson and Jan Grenci at LOC’s Prints and Photographs Division, who were kind enough to share some of the contact sheets from the collection as I hunted from railroad images not yet digitized.

Objectively, the 1966 Giants were quite awful. Playing their home games at the old Yankee Stadium, they proceeded to lose every single match except for one. They managed to tie their first game on the road, but subsequently lost the remainder. Not only did they have the worst record in the entire league that year, the 1966 season was the worst in franchise history, with the fewest total wins, and the worst point differential (-238)^[2]. In fact, the season ranks as one of the all time top 25 worst seasons for all teams in the entire NFL^[3].

If for some reason you had wanted to watch that hot mess of a team back in ’66, the New York Central did offer special Harlem Division trains for each of the home games. Leaving from North White Plains, the train made local stops to Mount Vernon before proceeding to Melrose, several blocks away from Yankee Stadium. Round trip fare was $2 from North White Plains through Scarsdale, and $1.50 from Crestwood through Mount Vernon—a $1 discount from the normal coach fare at the time.

Interestingly enough, to facilitate faster egress the train made a reverse move to dispense passengers on the northbound platform, which had exits on both 162nd and 161st Streets, as opposed to the southbound platform which only exited near 162nd (this platform does not exist today—the current platform is located north of 162nd Street, with the end situated where the tracks for the Port Morris Branch used to split off from the Harlem. The location of the old Melrose platform is now covered by the Morrisania Air Rights housing project).

Anyone who rode the special train received a commemorative brochure which explained how to get to the stadium from the station, as well as included a list of players on both sides and current league rankings. We’ve posted some of these before, but I recently purchased a few new ones, and figured I’d share.

https://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/ppmsca.70815

https://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/ppmsca.70820

https://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/ppmsca.70826

On the way home, the second and fifth cars of the consist were bar cars, and likely the place where many fans drank away their sorrows after the Giants considerable losses.

These special trains were short lived, and although it might be funny to blame their cancellation on the Giant’s abysmal record, it probably had something more to do with the Central’s lackluster financial situation, leading to their merger with the Pennsylvania Railroad two years later.

Hardly known until Grand Central’s restoration in the 1990’s—and rarely talked about since—many simply assumed that only a select few individuals who had the chance to traipse across sky-high scaffolding would ever gaze upon these signatures 116 feet above the floor. In reality, the full-frame 45 megapixel Canon R5 coupled with an RF 100-500mm lens is sufficiently capable of capturing much of the approximately two inch tall hidden writing, when wielded by a photographer with a will to search the stars!

But why are there any names up there to begin with, and to whom do they belong? For the answers to those questions, we must delve into the backstory of artist Charles Gulbrandsen…

A feature that interested me was the use of small dots, no bigger than a silver dollar, of almost neutral coloring. I said, “Nobody on the floor of the concourse, even with binoculars, could see these dots. Why did you put them here?”

—Charles B. Driscoll recounts of a conversation with Charles Gulbrandsen while touring the sky mural high above Grand Central. Neither the dots nor the signatures were ever intended to be seen from the floor.

Enter Charles Gustave Gulbrandsen

Born in Brooklyn on December 3, 1890 to Norwegian immigrant parents, Charles Gustave Gulbrandsen grew up surrounded by music and art, and family members of considerable creative talent. Charles found a love in painting, commencing with an early career in creating murals, and in his later years designing scenery for theatrical sets, and for television. As an apprentice at Hewlett-Basing Studio, Gulbrandsen played a small part in the creation of the first celestial mural above Grand Central’s main concourse.

Grand Central’s original skylight concept, and the constellations that we actually got.

Originally conceived to be a skylight, both timing and financial constraints led to the alternate concept of a fresco night sky. While much of Grand Central was strong and built to last, perhaps the fact that the ceiling was a bit of an afterthought ultimately led to a less sturdy construction. No matter the cause, it did not take long for the ceiling to begin leaking. Just over a decade later, it had deteriorated to the point of being an eyesore—seeping water had left cracks, streaks, and mold. New York Central executives approached artists for replacement ideas, including Robert Winthrop Chanler, who envisioned a more fantastic starry sky, albeit even less astronomically accurate. Despite these plans the cost of a replacement would be high, and thus no action would be taken for nearly twenty more years.

By the 1940s wartime railroad traffic was booming, and Grand Central set records year after year for visitors passing through. Railroad officials began to have serious fears that the Terminal’s corroded sky was more than simply a cosmetic issue—were any plaster to fall from above it could cause grievous injury. Ultimately, Charles Gulbrandsen was recalled to redo the ceiling, this time as the primary artist. By this time he had worked on several other noteworthy murals, including the ten in the National Newark Building, the Daughters of the American Revolution’s Constitution Hall, and Cornell’s Willard Straight Hall.

Though there was debate about whether the ceiling should be made “correct”—placing the constellations in their appropriate places, and not flipped—Gulbrandsen was set on a near-faithful recreation of the original. Some may have called the work a restoration, but in reality it was a complete do-over. Using large sheets of four foot by sixteen foot tracing paper, details from the original mural were transferred to the new surface—a one-eighth inch thick layer of pressed asbestos board. Then Gulbrandsen, along with five assistants, repainted the entirety of the mural in oil paints. The original mural had taken a year to create, while the recreation took about half that time, the majority of which consisted of bolting the steel rod scaffolding directly to the ceiling girders, and fastening the new board above the old plaster.

The ceiling is decoration, not a map. The constellations are north. They should be south. So what?

—Charles Gulbrandsen on the design of the sky ceiling, 1944. According to Gulbrandsen, the initial reversal was an intentional artistic choice, adapting a subject matter more suitable for a dome onto the Terminal’s barrel-vault configuration.

In total, the painting work took only ten weeks. As new constellations came to life, friends and family members were often invited up onto the scaffolding by Gulbrandsen to get an up-close look at the work going on. Many of the visitors picked a spot to leave their mark, signing their names or other messages for posterity, all invisible to the naked eye of the millions of travelers far below. Even today you can find the names of Gulbrandsen’s eldest children, his wife, several friends, railroad employees, reporters, and others scattered across the vast space of the sky. And when the ceiling was restored in the 1990s, several added to the tradition, including conservator John Canning, whose company worked to clear the grime away.

During the pandemic, finding the names hidden in the sky became a minor obsession for me. I started with the only location I had ever heard mentioned previously—J.V. Brophy’s name hidden in the eye of Pegasus. From there, I was able to determine that my camera, with its super telephoto lens and additional digital zooming, could actually capture the names. The next step was simply to search—I snapped photos of the constellations, merged them in Photoshop, and looked for “abnormalities” in the super-high resolution images. When you ignored all the other details that were too small to see from the ground, like the round holes that the original scaffolding was mounted through, the large staples fastening the boards to the ceiling, and the random streaks of dirt, you’d often find someone’s personal mark.

There was considerable excitement in finding a name, which quickly turned to curiosity. Who were these people, and why were their names there at all? Throughout the journey I learned a lot about an entire clan of talented artists and musicians, became well acquainted with the frustration of not being able to figure out who everyone was, and experienced a profound sadness for a young man whose life was tragically cut short very soon after signing his name in the heavens. It was uniquely exhilarating to find how these people fit into the larger puzzle, and especially so when I sighted the name of an artist whose name I recognized, who likely signed their name while capturing a famous photograph.

The next time you are in Grand Central, look up! There are secrets in the stars, and I am confident that I did not discover them all…

Cancer

Starting off at the northwest end of the Terminal’s ceiling (which would realistically be in the southeast, if the constellations were not reversed) is Cancer, the crab. Look to the right claw and you’ll find two sets of names, one surrounding the star Tegmen, and the other at the claw’s very tip.

1. Moses & Marguerite Harris

Born in 1899 in Brooklyn, Marguerite Harris is remembered as a talented “force of nature.” Leaving home at age fourteen to escape her staunchly religious parents, Marguerite became the assistant to Geoffrey Scott, editor of The Boswell Diaries. With a keen eye for art, Marguerite ran several art galleries in Los Angeles and New York City, including the “Ten Dollar Gallery,” where every painting cost just that amount (after the Great Depression, it became the “Twenty Dollar Gallery”). She was married several times, notably to film producer Sam Zimbalist, from whom she separated around 1940. After returning to New York, she married Moses Harris, and became known as a successful poet and editor. She founded the poetry journal Wand, was a force behind the Woodstock Poetry Festival, and was a recipient of the Edwin Markham Prize for Poetry.

2. 1997 All For Thomas & Jarett

I wasn’t able to track down who Thomas and Jarrett were, but someone wrote their names up on the ceiling of Cancer’s right claw during the restoration of the mural in the 90’s. If you’re ever looking for a signature to spot, this is the brightest and largest, so it would be my first recommendation to beginning ceiling stargazers.

Gemini

Following along the line of the ecliptic (the path of the sun through the stars), the next constellation we arrive at is Gemini, the twins. At least two signatures can be found within.

1. Rose & Mickey Flinn

2. Tom Glason

Orion

Moving on is Orion, the hunter, just below the ecliptic, and the only constellation to not be reversed. Signatures can be found in several of the constellation’s major stars, including Rigel (in the hunter’s foot) and Betelgeuse (in the shoulder). Passing through the bottom of the constellation is the celestial equator, a projection of the Earth’s equator into the sky.

1. T.A. Gilbert

2. P. Bock 1945

3. Ingrid Gulbrandsen

Born on November 8th 1890 in Arendal, Norway, Ingrid Lovold was a talented pianist that was educated in Belgium. She met Charles Gulbrandsen shortly after emigrating to the United States, and they wed in 1911. Together they had five children, including three whose names can be found on Grand Central’s ceiling.

4. Olga Yashina

5. Alfhild Engborg

Born in 1916, Alfhild Gulbrandsen was the second child of Charles and Ingrid Gulbrandsen. She grew up playing the piano and singing, and later attended the Packard School for Business to train as a secretary. Shortly before her name was written here, she married Arvid Robert Engborg.

Engborg held various jobs as a secretary throughout her life, including at the publishing house Doubleday, and was later a customer service representative for Sears Roebuck. She continued to play the piano throughout her life, and was remembered for other creative pursuits, including dressmaking.

Taurus

Next along the ecliptic is Taurus, the bull. Many signers chose stars for their marks, and here is no different. You will find names around the notable stars Elnath (tip of the horn) and Aldebaran (in the bull’s face), along with several others.

1. Nancy Green

2. Lt. H.C. Allington Jr. & Marge Allington

Born in Tarrytown on October 27, 1924, Homer Clifford Allington grew up in Binghamton, and later Port Washington, New York. Through his high school days he was known as “Sug” and was President of the Fratry, the local boy’s service organization. Although short in stature, Allington was a lover of sports (except badminton), and worked on beefing up his muscles by doing the Charles Atlas workout, with the hopes of joining the Navy Air Corps.

Allington instead became a member of the Army Air Forces, and was stationed in Guam as part of the 19th Bombardment Group. He took part in the firebombing of Tokyo in March of 1945, where he was the bombardier aboard B-29 Zero Auer. Shot down by anti aircraft fire, the plane crashed in Kawaguchi City, just north of Tokyo.

Shortly before shipping out, Allington scrawled his and his mother’s name around Zeta Tauri, the star at the tip of Taurus’s right horn. Decades later, it is a memory of one of many young people lost too soon during a brutal World War.

Allington was linked to the Gulbrandsen clan by his elder sister Helen, who married Charles Frithjof.

3. Charles B. Driscoll, New York Day By Day, 1945

Charles Benedict Driscoll, born October 19, 1885 in Wichita, Kansas, was an author of Irish descent, penning the book “Kansas Irish” about his Irish-born father’s life after immigrating to the United States. He worked as a newspaper reporter and editor, and was the author of the column “New York Day by Day” from 1938 until his death in 1951.

Driscoll was given a tour of the work by Charles Gulbrandsen himself, describing the work in the New York Day by Day column which appeared on June 6, 1945.

4. Signe Fay

Born in 1914, Signe Gulbrandsen was Charles and Ingrid’s first child. A talented lyric soprano, she received scholarships to the Curtis Institute of Philadelphia and the Julliard School of Music. As a professional vocalist Gulbrandsen appeared in many concerts in New York and New Jersey, and sang with the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra in 1937. She appeared on Broadway as Mary in the play “Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines” in 1938, and one year later married Thomas Bernard Fay.

5. John Christian

Musca & Triangulum

Further along the ecliptic we pass Aries (the ram), where I did not find any names, and reach the constellations of Musca, Triangulum, and the deprecated Triangulum Minus. Several signatures can be found throughout this group.

Gulbrandsen’s extra triangle

Although not a signature per se, I was unable to find any actual signature by of the artist himself. That being said, the second triangle in Triangulum is a departure from the original mural. Intended to be a faithful reproduction of the original, why was a second triangle added? Perhaps it was a special way for Gulbrandsen to leave his own mark.

As a constellation, Triangulum Minus is considered obsolete, and no longer recognized as an official constellation.

1. CHAWG

2. T.E. Lynch

3. J.A. Zang

4. G.A. Hall

5. Helen Hall

6. E. Nowak

Edwin Stanley Nowak was born on April 18, 1918 in Wyoming County, New York, and grew up in Rochester. Throughout his youth he photographed with a Kodak Brownie, developing his negatives at home. After a short stint studying chemical engineering at the University of Michigan, Nowak landed a lucrative job testing photographic film at Kodak, never returning to finish his degree. Alas, laboratory work left young Nowak unfulfilled, and he took a pay cut to work at a local photography studio.

The allure of more interesting and well-paying photography work lured Nowak to New York City, where he found jobs in the fashion industry and taught darkroom technique at the School of Modern Photography. He persuaded the New York Central Railroad to hire him, and served as the company’s on-staff full-time photographer until 1954, and later on a contract basis. Nowak’s body of work provides an impressive look at the final heyday of a great American railroad.

Later in life Nowak moved to Fort Myers, Florida, where he passed away on January 13, 2002.

Pisces

Next along the ecliptic is Pisces, two connected fishes. Look to their starry eyes, which hold the signatures we are seeking.

1. June & Larry Archer

2. Lois Cannon

3. W. E. Gallaher, Hudson Cond.

William Edwin Gallaher was born in 1908 in Crugers, New York and died in 1992. He worked for the New York Central Railroad as a conductor on the Hudson Division. On his World War II draft card he lists Irvington as his place of residence, and Grand Central’s Room 1612 as his place of employment.

Pegasus

The last constellation along the ecliptic is Aquarius (the water carrier), alas I did not find any signatures there, so we pass along to the opposite corner of the mural, where you will find Pegasus. Notable star Scheat, or Beta Pegasi, holds a total of four names, two along the top, and two more along the bottom.

1. J.V. Brophy

2. Edwin C. Hafker

Edwin Charles Hafker of Port Chester, New York. Born July 8, 1908. Hafker worked as a carpenter for Percy L. Smith Builders of Scarsdale. Died September 2, 1996.

Close to Hafker’s name is another bit of writing, but I was unable to decipher it. Perhaps you may be able to make a discovery of your own right here!

3. “Bub” & Helen Gulbrandsen

According to Gulbrandsen family lore, this was written by the elder Charles in celebration of the nuptials of his son Charles Frithjof Gulbrandsen – “Bub” and Helen Welte Allington.

Charles Frithjof was born September 7, 1920, attended St. Lawrence University after the war, and worked for IBM on Madison Avenue in Manhattan.

4. Mike DeLuco, John Canning, 1996

John Canning is a graduate of the Glasgow Stow College of Building, the Scottish Decorative Trades Institute, and the Glasgow School of Art. He emigrated to the United States in the early ’70s, and established a studio focusing on historic preservation in Cheshire, Connecticut. Some of the studio’s early projects included restoration work at Yale University and Connecticut’s state capitol building. The company was selected to work on Grand Central Terminal’s ceiling as part of the larger restoration efforts in the late ’90s under Beyer Blinder Belle.

Michael Albert DeLuco is a painter originally from Maine that has worked for John Canning’s company since 1987. He worked as a restorer on Grand Central’s ceiling in 1996 and 1997.

Hopefully, the above information will provide the next stargazers a place to begin their own journeys. Know some information about any of the people above, or find something new on the ceiling yourself? Drop me a line or comment below, and I’ll keep this list updated!

Special thanks to Amanda Murphy, great granddaughter of Charles Gulbrandsen, who provided photos and information for this article. Additional family photos were accessed through Ancestry family trees.

The transformation of the area around the train station in the early twentieth century was quick, and massive. The railroad’s tracks rose up, removing them from grade and separating them from the ever increasing amount of automobiles. The electrification process began, laying under-running third rail to permit electric powered trains which were able to operate more frequently. Meanwhile, older, now-obsolete infrastructure like the turntable north of Railroad Avenue disappeared. And in the area surrounding the station, businesses came and went—some by fire, and others by the wrecking ball.

1910 map showing the railroad’s route through White Plains. The small yard at the south end had disappeared before 1960, and the one at the north end was gone in the late 1960s. This land would become the site of the current station in White Plains.

Enter Admiral Dot

No prominent railroad town would be complete without an array of hotels for weary travelers to lay their heads. Surrounding the depot at White Plains were several, including the Union, the Orawaupum, as well as Admiral Dot’s Hotel.

Owner and operator Leopold Kahn was a quasi-celebrity, previously exhibited as a circus oddity along with several other “midgets” with similar military-esque monikers. The Admiral Dot appellation was given to Kahn in his youth by showman P.T. Barnum himself. Although from a modern lens such “freak show” exhibitions seem ethically problematic, at the time displaying such abnormalities for amusement and profit were commonplace. Dot, who at age seventeen was said to only weigh twenty pounds and was just over two feet tall, was shown alongside “Siamese twins“, a horned woman, and a “man monkey,” among many others.

Though many came simply to gawk at someone they found strange, Kahn actually enjoyed performing, and would sing, dance, and play musical instruments. Outside of the circus he performed as part of an acting troupe comprised of others with dwarfism, where he met his wife Lottie. Soon after their wedding in 1892, Kahn retired from “showbusiness” and took the small fortune accumulated from the circus (a quarter million dollars, equivalent to almost $7.5 million today) to settle down and open a hotel along Orawaupum Street.

Admiral Dot’s Hotel was just a short walk from the train depot, and even advertised by printing unofficial railroad timetables. A family affair, the couple maintained the hotel with nephew Major Atom (who was also in the circus), who worked as the night clerk. Along with the hotel, which was comprised of 48 guestrooms, a bowling alley, ballroom, and restaurant, Kahn also operated Lexington Hall, a banquet hall and concert venue behind the hotel where the Excelsior Orchestra performed every Wednesday night for dancing. Both survived until February 1911 when they burned to the ground in a fire along Orawaupum Street. As a firefighter with Independent Engine Company #2 Kahn was one of many that fought the fire, but was unable to stop it from destroying several businesses, including his own.

Processed By eBay with ImageMagick, z1.1.0. ||B2

Processed By eBay with ImageMagick, z1.1.0. ||B2

A New Rail Station Rises

Befitting the ever growing city of White Plains, a new monumental station was planned to replace the old, and completed in 1914. Designed by two of Grand Central’s architects, Warren and Wetmore, the station was one of the most notable along the Harlem Line, and a twin to the station built at Poughkeepsie. It boasted a large waiting room (the largest in Westchester County) with six long, double-sided chestnut wood benches, a cafeteria where travelers could grab a meal, and an adjoining room for Railway Express. The new station was built on a pile foundation and featured a copper roof and exterior walls of patterned brick, adorned with terra cotta detailing. The inside was finished with brick and wood paneling, and used steam heating and as expected for a recently electrified railroad, electric lights. Similar to those found in Grand Central, chandeliers featured exposed bulbs, highlighting the use of electricity. Coupled with the large eastern-facing arched windows, the station was filled with light.

The station itself was at street level, but was connected to the raised tracks twenty-five feet above, with 600-foot-long wooden platforms and shelters available for riders to wait.

Despite the sturdy brick construction, the station lasted only 69 years, meeting the wrecking ball in 1983, finally killing off a decayed and graffitied shadow of its former self.

The Bronx River Parkway is Born

Years of factory waste and the direct dumping of sewage left the Bronx River a foul and polluted waterway, deemed a “serious menace to public health.” The Bronx River Parkway Reservation project, which began in 1906, had several major goals, prime among them to clean up the river and to create a modern and efficient roadway from which to enjoy the scenery. As the railroad paralleled the river in many areas, the restored vistas would be visible to those onboard trains as well. In fact, some of the perceived pollution were the miles of billboards erected on the banks of the river and facing the tracks, advertising directly to the captive audience of train riders.

Although the restoration of the river was an admirable goal, not everyone was thrilled with the idea of the project. Significant portions of land needed to be taken—about two thirds of property owners sold their land directly, the rest was claimed through the courts and condemnation proceedings. Project designers stated that much of the land was blighted and filled with dilapidated shacks that were better off removed, but in reality this wasn’t always the case. In White Plains a neighborhood of Italian Americans on the opposite side of the railroad tracks was ousted, with homes, businesses, and churches razed.

At completion, the reservation was approximately fifteen miles long, and varied in width from 300 to 1,000 feet, with 125 acres in the city and 900 in Westchester.

When looking back at the project through the lens of modernity, I think one can see that cleaning and preserving the river was a necessity. However, the final arbiters of what land was taken and what neighborhoods were razed seemed to have made exceptions based upon cronyism, or to benefit more affluent areas like Bronxville, and likewise introduced ethical issues. Eugenicist and “scientific racist” Madison Grant, leader of the Bronx River Parkway Commission, was likely overjoyed to wipe immigrant neighborhoods off the face of the map, as he saw “non-Nordics” such as Irish and Italians as inferior humans and corruptors of American society.

The Commision’s idyllic vision for the parkway did not include the heavy industry that had grown up around the railroad, and several ousted businesses did not survive after losing their sidings and direct links to the Harlem.

In the city… there is a low class of development and increasingly unsanitary conditions. These already constitute an intolerable nuisance and serious menace to public health, apparently being neglected until some disastrous epidemic shall bring it forcibly to public attention…

Each of these three tales prove poignant snapshots of the drastically different White Plains of the early twentieth century. As evidenced by Dot’s unofficial timetable, a person living in New York City may have actually ventured to White Plains for the purpose of entertaining themselves at the hotel, restaurant and concert venue, and may have taken the train to do it. At one point in time the core area of White Plains surrounding the train station was both walkable and filled with businesses and entertainment.

The rise and fall of the Warren and Wetmore station in the city proved to be a poster child for the movement of urban renewal. Something that was once beautiful had degraded into a broken down and graffitied shadow of its former self. Tearing it all down and starting anew seemed like the best idea to planners and leadership at the time. In some ways, the razing of a neighborhood for the Bronx River Parkway’s construction was almost like a dry run, foreshadowing the future actions to take place in the area near the station. Many municipalities across Westchester and beyond experienced the taking and razing of homes and businesses for the progress of parkways and interstates, but far fewer of them went through the drastic step of erasing their entire downtown in the name of progress.

It may not have been paradise, but it got paved over, and today there’s a heck of a lot of parking lots. Was the complete erasure of downtown successful in attracting businesses? Certainly. But it erased a community and turned it into an imposing car-centric quasi-office park. As the dilapidated White Plains mall crumbles, and the Galleria reaches its functional end of life, new ideas are needed to reinvent downtown, and bring back the people that have long been kept away.

Special thanks to Patrick Raftery, Librarian at the Westchester County Historical Society. Posts like these would not be possible without the excellent archival photography found at the WCHS, and in the collections of the White Plains Public Library and the Westchester County Archives.

Today’s wanderings take place about fifteen miles southeast of Hawaii’s capital Honolulu, on the island of O’ahu. “Recent” volcanic eruptions from several thousands years ago have sculpted the island and its coasts, and tuff cone Koko Crater is a notable byproduct. The crater, originally owned by the Hawaiian royal family, was selected by Marconi’s Wireless Telegraph Company as a trans-Pacific relay point for wireless communications in 1912. The site was built as a link in a chain that was expected to circle the globe, relaying messages to other stations in Japan and San Francisco, which in turn would relay those messages further along, connecting the globe. Intended to work jointly with the nearby Kahuku station—with Koko Head receiving and Kahuku transmitting—Kahuku ended up being able to handle both jobs, rendering Koko Head superfluous early on.

With the onset of World War I, all radio communications sites were taken over by the government, and Koko Head was operated by the Navy, who used it for a short time as a receiving station. Eventually the equipment at both Kahuku and Koko Head was replaced by better technology elsewhere, and both fell out of favor. Nonetheless, Koko Crater’s strategic position atop the Hawaiian horizon would bring further opportunities. In 1942 the US Army began constructing a military installation at Koko Head, with a base camp for stationed soldiers to live at the bottom, and a radar station at the summit of the crater. To facilitate the movement of supplies and personnel to the top, a tramway was constructed and completed in 1943.

After the war the site was turned over to the Hawaii Air National Guard and continued to serve as a radar station. The site also contained a microwave link facility for the Federal Aviation Administration. With the advent of more advanced technology, yet again the site was retired and the land (and tramway) turned over to the city of Honolulu in 1966. The city had little use for the tramway, and the infrastructure steadily deteriorated over the years.

Thank you to the Hawaii National Guard Retiree News website, which has posted several photos of the original Koko Crater tramway

At some point, however, locals became intrigued with the former tramway, using it as an athletic challenge. The railway ties had in effect become a stairs, albeit a more strenuous climb than any typical stairway. The city never encouraged the practice, yet never quite turned away anyone until 2008, when no trespassing signs were posted in response to injuries along the stairs. After an intense backlash from the locals that frequent the trail for exercise (according to a 2019 survey, more than half of the trail’s users live on O’ahu), the decision was soon reversed.

Despite the reopening, the trail had in fact degraded to the point of dangerousness. The ties were heavily worn and the land underneath eroded. In 2018, a local group of volunteers formed, calling themselves the Kokonut Koalition, and have worked tirelessly to repair what I will dub the “rail trail on steroids.” Engineer Don Jacobs, who had worked on the Manitou Incline—a similar conversion from rail to steep trail in Colorado, was consulted on the project, and came up with a plan for repairing the tramway to make it safe again. On October 23, 2021 the group completed the final stair, and held a celebration ceremony on the 28th. Though complete for now, the Kokonut Koalition will continue to maintain the trail, and you can donate to their efforts to do so here.

Hiking the trail

Tourists have hiked Koko Crater for more than a century, and with the recent repair of the stairs, expect the number of visitors continue to grow. The hike is worth doing for the views from the top, but do expect a challenge. Some guidebooks and travel “influencers” make it sound overly easy, setting visitors up for failure before they even begin. I was surprised to see people dragging their toddlers up the mountain, or climbing barefoot because they only wore flimsy flip flops. To set the record straight, the hike isn’t easy (22% of hikers on Hiking Project have rated it a double black diamond, and 57% a single black diamond), and even physically fit people have been injured doing it. Nonetheless, reasonably fit people shouldn’t have an issue hiking to the top, just don’t expect it to be a cakewalk (President Obama and photographer Pete Souza hiked the trail in 2015 and described it as “grueling”).

The fact that the trail is only a little over half a mile is somewhat deceptive. You begin at around 200 feet above sea level, and the tramway continues up another 1,000 feet, and there are spots where you’re climbing up a 49% grade. Plus you’ll end up climbing even higher to reach the vantage point of the old radar platform. But obviously, a little common sense goes a long way. If you’re looking to do the hike be sure to wear sturdy footwear, bring lots of water and sunscreen, and consider hiking earlier in the morning to avoid the full power of the sun.

The views at the summit are fantastic, just ignore the excruciating pain that you have in your thighs for the next three days afterward.