February 28, 2006
Exploring New York from top to extreme underground
In an upstairs room just past the taxi-dermied polar bear at The Explorers Club, about 150 people last night gathered to hear the stories and see the pictures of urban explorer Steve Duncan, who has spent the past decade climbing the city's bridges, ferreting through its empty tunnels and documenting the forgotten ruins.
He's explored the empty Small Pox Hospital, the unused subway tunnel under Central Park (from 57th to 63rd and Lexington,) the Red Hook Graving Docks, the old rail tracks leading to the Hudson River in the 30s, and an area under Fort Totten which he said is the longest pedestrian tunnel in New York City, still bearing "Remember the Maine" graffiti memorializing the 1898 attack on the U.S. ship docked in a Cuban harbor.
Duncan, who was the host of Discovery Channel's "Urban Explorers" show, also runs a web site, UnderCity: a guerrilla historian in gotham, which features a number of his images and stories of his ventures.
The Explorers Club evening was peppered with phrases such as "the closest I've come to dying underground" (trapped in a Queens storm drain by high tide,) "the most worrisome thing I've seen," (a family of eels in the Queens sewer,) and of course "don't try this at home."
Under Columbia University, he found remnants from the Bloomingdale Insane Asylum, including old radiators under the foundations of university buildings which in some cases are built on the footprints of the asylum buildings.
Also under Columbia is a bit of pre-Manhattan Project history, including the clunky machine, the cyclotron, used by John Dunning to split an atom in 1939, the first time it had ever been done in the United States.
"You get interested in something on the surface, and you find that the really interesting stuff is underground," Duncan said. "There's wonderful stuff to see, and of course the only problem is getting there."
His images -- sometimes taken with multiple flashes, long exposures, and diffused light painting effect -- added quite a bit of drama to his talk, especially when describing the state of the abandoned observation decks from the 1964 World's Fair. "All the metal elements are mostly rusted out, stairs are missing, but if you can get up to the top, you can see all of Queens," Duncan said, timing his slide to the end of sentence for maximum oohing and aahhing from the crowd.
Duncan said he is able to do most of his explorations with permission, but warned that "even when you're not doing anything illegal, it looks suspicious," like the time he was looking for a tunnel entrance in Newark, N.J. and 34 people called the cops.
Duncan is also the co-founder of Opus Publishing, which makes a number of New York City maps available for purchase online.
The Explorers Club is located at 46 E. 70th Street, map. In case you haven't led a scientific expedition up Everest, walked the moon, or discovered a lost Amazon tribe, it hosts lectures open to the public a few times a month.
Pictures of the subway tunnel and the Queens World's Fair observation decks used with permission from Steve Duncan, who sells many of his images from UnderCity.org.
Corrected: This entry was updated to state that Dunning was the first person to split the atom in the United States, not the world.
Related: National Geographic's New York Underground
Earlier: Waldorf-Astoria's private rail platform forever closed
Subway expansion hits centuries-old Battery Wall
Exploring secret Ellis Island during Open House NY
Underground Railroad in more Brooklyn basements?
East River Industrial Heritage Trail in the works
What's under New York? Four questions for Julia Solis
Archaeological artifacts at NY Unearthed may leave city
New York Unearthed by appointment only
Underground New York
Touring Gotham's archaeology with book in hand
February 28, 2006 11:28 AM in History, Maps, Out of Manhattan, Sightsology, Upper East Side
Comments (1)
®Copyright 2006, All Rights Reserved
|
