GRAND ST BRIDGE AND NEWTOWN CREEK - MASPETH QUEENS

A narrated NYC stories video today on the Grand St. Bridge and the Newtown Creek located in Maspeth, Queens. As you can imagine, this video took me hours to produce, and I forgot to add the channel intro at the start of the video :) Because I had worked for so long I couldn't undo what I had already done, so I ended up only adding the channel intro at the end of the video. I'm really happy with the end result though, with the only issue being that I couldn't decide which thumbnail to use.

Because of the effort that I put into this video, I am going to need to meditate this time when it comes to those robotic comments that we all get from users who never watch any of your video, and who end up destroying your retention rate.

Grand Street and Grand Avenue are connected via a swing bridge over Newtown Creek, known as the Grand Street Bridge. Construction began in August 1900 and was planned to be completed in October 1901, but the bridge did not open until December 1902. A later report found the delay was caused by the contractor hired to build the bridge being incompetent, forcing the City to finish the project. The current bridge is the third on the site. The first two, both made of wood, were built in 1875 and 1890.

Newtown Creek, a 3.5-mile (6-kilometer) long tributary of the East River, is an estuary that forms part of the border between the boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens, in New York City. Channelization made it one of the most heavily used bodies of water in the Port of New York and New Jersey and thus one of the most polluted industrial sites in the US, containing years of discarded toxins, an estimated 30,000,000 US gallons of spilled oil, including the Greenpoint oil spill, raw sewage from New York City’s sewer system, and other accumulation from a total of 1,491 sites.

The creek begins near the intersection of 47th Street and Grand Avenue on the Brooklyn-Queens border at the intersection of the East Branch and English Kills. It empties into the East River at 2nd Street and 54th Avenue in Long Island City, opposite Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan at 26th Street. Its waterfront, and that of its tributaries Dutch Kills, Whale Creek, Maspeth Creek, and English Kills are heavily industrialized. Combined sewer overflow (CSO) pipes drain into all four major tributaries, as well as the East Branch of the creek; during rainstorms, these handle raw sewage.

Because the surrounding neighborhoods are completely sewerized, the creek has little natural inflow of natural freshwater, and is largely stagnant except as a result of tides. Its outgoing flow of 14 billion US gallons per year consists of CSO, urban runoff, raw domestic sewage, and industrial wastewater. There is a 15-foot-thick (4.6 m) layer (in some places 25 feet (7.6 m)[3]) of polluted sludge that has congealed on the creek bed.

The Lower Montauk Branch of the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR), used only for freight, runs along the north bank.

Dutch Kills starts at 47th Avenue and 29th Street in Long Island City, and empties into Newtown Creek on the right bank. The course of Dutch Kills is lined mainly with warehouses. Formerly, its headwaters were at Northern Boulevard and 33rd Street. It formed a navigable stream along with Sunswick Creek to the north, making it easy for merchants to transport produce and goods along the creek.

Whale Creek starts at what is now the Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, and empties into the creek on the left bank opposite Dutch Kills. It originally extended further south to Greenpoint Avenue, but was straightened and turned into a canal in the 20th century. Much of the creek was infilled to make way for the treatment plant. Today, the Newtown Creek Nature Walk runs along the remaining spur of the creek.

Maspeth Creek starts on the right bank, within Maspeth, Queens, and runs about 1,000 feet (300 m) before emptying into Newtown Creek. Prior to the industrial development of Queens, Maspeth Creek originated on the Ridgewood Plateau, a plateau that separated the watersheds of Newtown Creek to the south and Flushing River to the east.

English Kills originates from a CSO pipe at 465 Johnson Avenue in East Williamsburg. It drains 344,400,000 US gallons (1.304×109 L) of sewage annually. The present path of English Kills was straightened in the late 19th century. The Kills is crossed by the LIRR Bushwick Branch and the Metropolitan Avenue Bridge.

The East Branch originates at Metropolitan and Onkerdonk Avenues, at a CSO pipe that drains 586,000,000 US gallons (2.22×109 L) annually. It is crossed only by the Grand Street Bridge.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newtown...