Excerpts from the Newtown Creek Community
Planning Workshop
February 3, 2000
The following is only a small sample
from the transcripts of the February meeting.
All names have been edited out.
“I
have lived on Noble Street and now work on Noble Street, and
I can remember taking my lunch hour on the Noble Street Pier,
actually having access. It wasn’t the safest place to
be but it was open to the public. You could walk all the way
down to the waterfront, sit down and have your lunch. Saturday
night [in] the old days when Rock and Roll began and the guys
used to hang out on the corner and harmonize. Those were great
places to sit and harmonize. So you younger folks don’t
know or remember those days.”
“I found
Newtown Creek by accident when I got lost finding a
construction site in Maspeth about 15 or 20 years ago. My
interest in it from a very
early time was as a safe boating place, as I have met people
in Greenpoint who, I was surprised to find, thought it was
too dirty to do things in. As far as I’m concerned, if
you’re in a boat, you’re not touching it. I guess
I became interested in issues of access. The best way to find
it is by boat. I’m very jealous of the Queens frontage
because it’s not a bulkhead. There’s much more shore
on the Queens side, and that has a lot to do with what you
see and whether it’s resurgent for wildlife. Mine is
a recent memory.”
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“At
the turn of the century the railroads that exist on the Queens
side and the traffic of Newtown Creek had made Long Island
City the premiere industrial complex in New York City and
had made the Creek a real dump. I mean a terrible sewer…The
settlement near the town of Newtown changed its name to Elmhurst
and it’s been called Elmhurst ever since. Now we have
a name that means nothing to nobody anymore for the most part.
We always called it Newtown Creek, but it doesn’t go
to Newtown anymore. Newtown is kind of a bland name in the
first place. It doesn’t relate to Indians, it’s
just like New City, big deal. But it’s the new world
– there’s new things all over the place. Change
the name, change the spirit, and my other thing would be bring
back the stations on the railroad and start using that railroad
to get people to go there with public transportation. The
railroad brings you access to the Creek. Otherwise you’re
way further in on the Queens side and you can’t get there.”
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