Nathan Kensinger Photography

Inwood: Substation No. 10

June 30, 2009 -

The New York Central Railroad Substation No. 10 is a 79-year-old art-deco building on the northwest edge of Inwood, Manhattan. Located just steps from an active Amtrak line on the Hudson River, the substation is nestled between two Henry Hudson Parkway overpasses.

According to a report from Columbia University's Department of Historic Preservation, "the New York Central Railroad Substation was built in 1930 to provide electrical service for the trains on the NYCRR’s Hudson River line. The five-thousand-square-foot, two-room, brick structure is an example of the pre-Columbian style of Art Deco... employing motifs borrowed from Aztec and Mayan cultures..."

Pre-Columbian Style

Substation 10 has been abandoned for decades, with graffiti and primitive wall drawings that date back to at least the 1980's. In 2003, an active squatter community was reported by the NY Times: "homeless people scurry in and out through the back windows of the structure... and leave years of clothes, mattresses and Chinese takeout containers scattered around the electrical equipment inside." Despite years of neglect, the interior of Substation 10 remained in remarkably good condition. Its massive power equipment, staircases and ventilation systems were rusty, but fairly intact.

Substation Interior

The Department of Parks & Recreation began gutting Substation No. 10 earlier this June. Today, a sign out front explains the building is being "reconstructed to provide public restrooms" and "possible community use." Large dumpsters are slowly being filled with bricks and electrical devices stripped from the interior. No mention has been made of a reported proposal for an arts center with "an upscale Latino restaurant to be built on the top floor." Work is scheduled to be completed in Spring of 2010.

These photos are a last look at the old interior of Substation Number 10, and were taken shortly before its "reconstruction" began.

Ground Floor

Steps & Woman

Staircases

Brahma Bull Wall Drawing

Fire Damage

Escher View

Bricks Intact

H.T. Feeder No. 79

Hook

Exhaust: Curve & Coil

Top Floor: Final Words

Far Rockaway: Abandoned Bungalows

June 17, 2009 -

Far Rockaway, on the eastern edge of Queens, was once a flourishing summer community. Today, its landscape is like the half-abandoned city of Buffalo, with vast empty lots and a large number of abandoned homes. In 2008, according to the NY Times, the Far Rockaway's city council representative called his district "ground zero" of the subprime mortgage crisis.

Up until the 1970's, the streets of Far Rockaway were lined with hundreds of summer bungalows. Only a few of these cottages remain. Some are now year-round homes. Many have been abandoned, sealed off and covered in gang graffiti. According to neighbors, empty bungalows have been used to stage illegal dogfights. Others are used as makeshift kennels for fighting dogs. One group of 16 bungalows has been taken over by squatters from El Salvador, according to NY Post reporter Sarah Ryley: "The shacks are in bad shape, lacking water, heat and electricity. But the few that are habitable have been turned into adequate shelters, complete with front porches, buckets to collect rainwater, and small courtyard gardens seeded with jalapeno peppers and tomatoes." (Three photos from this series were first published with that article: Squatter Explosion)

Salvadoran Squatter's Home and Garden

80 years ago, Far Rockaway was "the summer getaway of A-List actors," according to the NY Times, which also reports that "in 1929, Groucho Marx owned 24 [bungalows] as an investment." However, "air-conditioning and air travel spelled the end of Far Rockaway’s heyday, and half a century later it hit rock bottom, with high crime, [and] wrongheaded urban-renewal schemes." The Rockaways' "tortured development history," according to City Limits, created a neighborhood where "in place of the empty lots and dilapidated homes, speculative developers built condos and apartments.... almost all of the new homes never sold. Today they are not occupied by homeowners, but by subsidized tenants with limited disposable income..." The NY Post reported in May 2009 that "of the 126 two- and three-family homes built in the neighborhood between 2004 and 2006, at least 76 percent have been foreclosed on or are currently in some stage of foreclosure."

For Sale: Fire Damaged Apartment Complex

The future is uncertain for the remaining bungalows of Far Rockaway. Some are slated for demolition by developers. Others are collapsing under the weight of abandonment. A few that are in good shape are part of The Beachside Bungalow Preservation Association.

The following photos document the last of the abandoned bungalows:

Bungalow Complex Courtyard

Courtyard, Arch and Bungalows

Bungalow Kennel: A Fighting Dog Named Menace

Abandoned Bungalow

Bungalows and Development

Cage and Bungalow Ruins

Squatter's Home

Squatter's Porch

Hammock and Fireplace

Drying Clothes

Overgrown Bungalow Ruins

Empty Bungalow: Wall Paper

Living Room Ruins

Bathroom Window

Kitchen

Bungalow and Garden

Brooklyn International Film Festival

The 12th Brooklyn International Film Festival (BiFF) took place from June 5th through 14th 2009. BiFF presented over 120 films that were selected from more then 2,750 submissions coming from 111 countries. As the documentary programmer for the festival, I presented a program of 20 documentaries which were selected from a field of over 870 submissions.

While all of the selected documentaries merit equal attention, several have subjects that relate directly to the themes of this website. Locally, Diary of a Times Square Thief presents a portrait of the "Times Square area when it was still a dramatically brutal urban jungle" while Milk In the Land uses footage of the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn to illustrate the history of milk. On the international level, One Day After the Tenth Day was filmed in a ruined, almost medieval landscape on the outskirts of an Iranian city, while Don Roberto's Shadow was filmed in a Chilean ghost town which was once a prison camp. Salt in the Scars documents the salt harvesting industry of India, Left Behind tells the story of illegal coal miners working in abandoned mines in the Lower Silesian Coalfield, and The Hillside Crowd captures life in a modern-day Deadwood - a gold rush town in the hills of Burkina Faso.

An in depth article about the documentary lineup was featured on The New York Times website "The Local" - and began "There is a pretty amazing-sounding 10-day film fest starting tonight in Brooklyn Heights, the Brooklyn International Film Festival..."

The award for Best Documentary (aka the Diane Seligman Award) which includes $5,000 in cash, was won by The Hillside Crowd. The Spirit Award was won by The Sari Soldiers and the Audience Award for documentary was won by Between the Folds.

Williamsburgh Savings Bank - Part 2

May 18th, 2009 -

A second visit to the Williamsburgh Savings Bank reveals more of it's hidden spaces. Inside the bank vault, strange graffiti is illuminated. In unfinished luxury apartments on upper levels, blueprints are left on display. And at the very top of the building, the dome awaits. Accessible only through a maze of trap doors, rickety ladders, and temporary scaffolding, the Williamsburgh Savings Bank dome is the highest point in Brooklyn, topping out at 512 feet. While the bank's clockworks are surprisingly small, the dome is an overwhelming piece of architecture. It is a giant golden cage, completely open to the elements. It consists of metal panels, arranged in concentric circles around a massive brick smokestack. These panels descend from the very top of the building like a fountain of gold, the sunlight glinting off their gilded surface.

Photographs from a previous exploration of the bank can be seen here. Other photos from this expedition can be seen at Bluejake.

Central Column

Fountain of Gold

Gilded Sheen

Descending

Oval Windows at Base

The View from the Highest Point in Brooklyn

The Penthouse

Foreman's Desk

The Blueprint

The Vault, Lit

Inside the Vault

Pancho's Mark

Machpelah Cemetery: Houdini's Grave

April 30th, 2009 -

Machpelah Cemetery, in Glendale, Queens, is the final resting place of magician Harry Houdini. In 1926, Houdini - the son of a Hungarian rabbi - died unexpectedly and was buried in this Jewish cemetery. His grave draws visitors from around the world, but otherwise Machpelah has fallen on hard times. "The cemetery always seemed utterly deserted and forgotten," writes the NY Times. Many gravesites remain untended and weed covered. Names and dates have washed away on some tombstones, leaving blank slates. And looming over Houdini's well-kept memorial is a 1928 cemetery office, abandoned and filled with discarded burial records. This once beautiful building is now home to a large family of pigeons.

According to the American Jewish Yearbook of 1899-1900, the Machpelah Cemetery Association was founded in 1860 and included "83 component [burial] societies." This undoubtedly played some role in the cemetery's demise. The damaging collapse of Jewish burial societies was recently exposed by the Village Voice: "The first societies were founded by Jewish immigrants well over a century ago... so that members could pool their money to buy grave sites and pay for funerals... burial societies have, over the past century, faded from the public consciousness - many of them eventually losing all of their members and existing only on paper." The result is "century-old burial societies... taken over by black-market speculators" who "even sell active graves out from under their owners."

Houdini's Grave

Abandoned Graves

Machpelah Office

In the Office

"All Burial Permits"

Pigeon Bones

Yellow Outlet

2nd Floor

In the Closet

Door Askew

In the Shower

Flowers

View to Graves

Charity

Williamsburgh Savings Bank

April 23, 2009 -

The Williamsburgh Savings Bank is a Brooklyn icon. Also known as One Hanson Place and "The Clocktower," this landmark building was completed in 1929 and remains Brooklyn's tallest structure. Much has been written about the bank's history, including an article at Forgotten NY and a photoessay at Satan's Laundromat. However, there are many hidden spaces remaining inside this massive building, from its basement vaults to the surprisingly small clockworks at the top of the building. Though it once housed dozens of dentists and doctors' offices, few have seen the interior of the bank since it was closed in 2005. Over the last four years, the building has been renovated into a luxury residential complex. Work is still not finished and many residential spaces remain empty, including Penthouse A, with its two private observation decks. Soon, though, the building will be completely filled and permanently closed to the public.

Click here to see part two of this photo essay, including a look inside the Clock Tower Dome.

Basement Vaults

4 Feet Thick

In the Lobby

Teller's Window

Breukelen Mural

Hidden View

Metal and Stone

Ram's Head

Arch and Tower

Observation Deck

Placards and Arches

8: The Fighting at Gowanus

Flatbush and 4th

The Clock Face

Inside the Clock Tower

Clock Works

Harlem - P.S. 186

March 30. 2009 -

PS 186 is a somber ruin looming over a busy Harlem street. Opened in 1903, this elementary school was shuttered in 1975. According to a 2005 WNYC piece "it’s been thirty years since PS 186 in Harlem was closed because of its dilapidated conditions. The neglected building has been rotting away ever since." The New York Landmarks Conservancy describes PS 186's current condition as "poor" - inside the building, trees have taken root, floors are collapsing, birds have found refuge, and yet the auditorium is filled with upright chairs. A 2007 New York Sun article promised that "development plans are emerging" but, unlike the work being done at nearby PS 90, there is no evidence that PS 186 is being redeveloped by its owners, the ML Wilson Boys and Girls Club, despite a promise made in 1986 to create a community center in the space. Like the abandoned Renaissance Ballroom nearby, PS 186 is an eloquent reminder of the Harlem's long and sometimes troubled history.

Additional images by photographers on this expedition are at Bluejake and Impose Magazine.

Courtyard View

Auditorium

Upright Rows

Top Floor

Stairwell Sunlight

Rectangles

Classroom, Snow, Trees

Korean Graffiti

Blackboard Jungle

Arches, Portal, Sunlight

Street View

Coney Island - Under the Boardwalk

March 12, 2009 -

In Brooklyn, even the hidden world under the Coney Island Boardwalk isn't safe from development. Recent repair work near Shoot the Freak has revealed and destroyed the Freak's domain. Luckily, there are still forgotten areas further down the boardwalk, stretches of quiet land that are home to tunnel lairs, foxholes, abandoned building entrances, discarded sharks, guard-doves, love nests and campsites. It is, as Lawrence Ferlinghetti wrote in A Coney Island of the Mind -"a kissproof world of plastic toilet seats tampax and taxis/[...]and all the other fatal shorn-up fragments/of the immigrants dream come too true/and mislaid/among the sunbathers."

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On a personal note - these photos are dedicated to Robert Guskind, who's encouragement and support, beginning with a single photo in 2006, helped inspire me to document Brooklyn's entire industrial waterfront. He was a generous friend who advised me in creating this website, and then wrote a story about nearly every photo essay on it for Curbed and The Gowanus Lounge, bringing thousands of people to my photographs. I was just one of the many people in the Brooklyn community that he supported and encouraged. Robert loved Coney Island and I had looked forward to sharing these photos with him this week, on the 2nd anniversary of this website. Robert passed away unexpectedly last week.