Navy Yard Rooftops

My residency at the Brooklyn Navy Yard ended several months ago, but I still have a bunch of work in my sketchbook that I haven't posted, so here's some more. This batch is of views of the rooftops of the Yard.

This is the one of the most distinctive sights of the Navy Yard, atop Building 1 right on Flushing Ave. This mysterious structure is a World War II radio antenna. This building originally housed the Materials Science Laboratories; now it's part of Steiner Studios.

Smokestack of Building 292, which now houses the BNY administrative offices, as well as a scene shop.

Building 12, the former Pipe & Copper Shop.

The Central Power Plant, now operated by BNY Cogeneration.

Vinegar Hill

Vinegar Hill is a tiny, quirky remnant of a neighborhood hidden away between DUMBO and Wallabout. You have to know it's there; there's no public transportation or main thoroughfare that passes through it.

It was originally developed in the late 18th century by a landowner named John Jackson. He named the area after the 1798 Battle of Vinegar Hill, the last battle in the Irish Rebellion against the English, in order to appeal to Irish immigrants. For many years, it was known as "Irish Town," and during Prohibition the area was a major producer of moonshine. Later, it became home to an influx of Lithuanian immigrants.

It's now only about six blocks, but it used to be much bigger. The construction of the BQE and the Manhattan Bridge destroyed the bulk of it, and the closure of the nearby Brooklyn Navy Yard in the 1960s further lead to its decline. Today, there are still cobblestone streets (technically, "Belgian Block" streets), and century-old Federal- and Greek Revival-style buildings, and old storefronts that have become residences.

The old garage above is an example of old, untouched architecture. Below is an old, abandoned truck, hidden away in a small lot. I'm pretty sure it's a 1960 B 61 Mack Truck (Fun fact: Mack Trucks was founded in Brooklyn!). Who knows how long it's been there. There's a logo on the door for "Chelsea Dem Co," which I could find no record of, and an address which is now a building for NYU Tisch School of the Arts.

Donna

Life drawing from last week's visit to Minerva's Studio.

Trying out something new for these, using black and white charcoal pencil on toned paper.

Katie

Done at Minerva's Studio on Broome Street last week. The session was one long pose, which is not my favorite. I prefer to have the mix of quick poses working up to a long pose. But, it was the only day I was free, and I wound up enjoying it. Fortunately, I was able to switch seats in the latter half so I could get a different view.

Orton Cranes

One of the most common pieces of advice for artists is to work work work, and this experience confirms it. I created around 100 drawings over the course of my residency as a Visiting Artist at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, and I returned to this spot many times. This group of drawings of the cranes of Dry Dock 4 represents some of the first drawings I did during this project and some of the final ones, and I can see a definite development. Not a dramatic change in style or quality, but more solidity and confidence, in the line, the color, and composition.

Dry Dock 4 cuts 700' into the west side of the yard. It is now defunct. Either side of the dry dock is anchored by giant diesel-electric cranes, built by the Orton Crane Company in 1935. They traveled around the dry dock on super-wide gauge railroad tracks. One still stands, though it is (I presume) non-functional. The other was scrapped in the 1997, according to Bartelstome's book, leaving only the lower part. This photo from the BNY Archives shows them in their heyday.

There are several things like this around the site; iconic structures that stand like monuments, but are defunct. Like the Railroad Transfer Bridge and the airplane spotting towers, they are cool relics of the Navy Yard's past, and strangely beautiful in their way. But they are non-functional and would be near-impossible to restore. And even if they were, they would no longer serve any purpose.

Or consider the Admiral's Row Mansions. They were a row of ten mansions on Flushing Avenue that once housed the officers of the Navy Yard. Once beautiful, classical mansions built in the latter half of the 19th century, they had been abandoned and neglected for decades and fallen into complete ruin. Some beautiful ruin-porn can be found online, including here. They were levelled in 2016, save for one, to make room for a Wegman's Supermarket and parking lots. There was some protest against their demolition, arguing that Brooklyn's waterfront history was being erased. But it seems to me that they were lost to history long ago, and that derelict buildings and structures are not particularly informative or educational as history. And while a supermarket doesn't sound romantic (though lots of people are super-excited about this Wegman's), a supermarket serves a concrete purposes in that neighborhood that a row of collapsing mansions does not.

The giant gears that turn the cab of the crane. A co-worker saw this drawing and informed me that it's called a slew ring.

The remnants of the second Orton Crane . . .

Pump House Process

I sometimes get asked about my process, so I decided to document this drawing from my Brooklyn Navy Yard pump house series.

I start with a pencil drawing, generally with a 2H pencil. I'm using Canson XL Series Mixed Media sketchbooks; all the Navy Yard work is in 9X12 books. This drawing is looser and less finished than I usually do because I was working fast for a couple of reasons: it was hot and dirty and uncomfortable in there, I was trying to get a couple of sketches done that afternoon,  I was going to start losing the light, and I wasn't really supposed to be in there in the first place.

Pencil drawing becomes an ink drawing, clarifying details and solidifying structure. I primarily use Sakura Pigma Micron pens. They hold up under the layers of color I'm about to put over them. I forgot to take a photo of just the ink stage, so this also has the beginning of the color stage, a warm grey watercolor pencil wash over the background.

I should also mention that only the pencils were done on site. Urban Sketcher orthodoxy says that you should complete the work then and there, but I don't. Sometimes I start the ink stage on site, but only sometimes. Also, I take photos to use for reference, which is also frowned upon by the purists.

For color, I use watercolor pencils and Derwent Inktense pencils. I like the look of watercolor with the control of pencil. Sometimes I'll use regular watercolor paint for a big wash, like a sky or something. At this stage, I'm just using watercolor pencils, because you can layer and blend them and work over them in a way that you can't with the Derwent Inktense.

Here I lay in the base colors of the pump and some of the background objects. The pump is conveniently divided into two main sections, green on the bottom and blue on top. Much of it - especially the blue part - will be obscured by subsequent layers depicting accumulated rust and decay.

Beginning layering color, watercolor pencils,  then the Derwents. Focusing on the lower half at first. I'm consulting my reference photos, but trying to capture the gist of the rust patterns and values rather than photographic accuracy.

Continuing into the blue upper half. It looks like it's lighter than the previous stage, but that's just my bad photography.

The final result.  At the end, I stopped looking at reference and relied on memory, impressions, and what the drawing seemed to need. This is all done with the Derwent Inktense pencils, which sit on top of previous layers and have much more intense hues. The background in particular became a lot darker and colder; the value and hue creating more contrast with the pump.

This final image is a scan of the sketchbook page, adjusted in Photoshop to look as close to the original as I can get, because I don't know how to photograph my work well enough.

And that's how I do it!

Navy Yard Pump House

My stint as a visiting artist at the Brooklyn Navy Yard wrapped up in November, but I still have a buttload of work that I’ve been finishing up, so there will be several more posts with lots more Navy Yard images.

One of the places I discovered was a small building at the Northeastern corner of the Yard, at the junction of Piers J and K. It is nondescript, abandoned and unused, and inside are two gigantic machines that look like the Daleks from Doctor Who, and an assortment of huge, rusted pipes and valves, electric panels, and mysterious-looking equipment, surrounded by garbage, debris, forgotten piles of supplies, and random stuff. It didn’t seem like a place I was supposed to be in, but the door was wide open, and there was no “Do Not Enter” sign, so . . .

It took me a long time to find out what this building and machines were. I was able to identify it was Building 991, but the Navy Yard Building Survey just listed it as “Pump House,” under a list of buildings “which do not appear to have sufficient historical significance to warrant individual historical review write-up.”

Eventually, I found a photo of these things in John Bartelstone’s photography book with a caption that said they were Salt Water Fire Pumps. I then found a brief write up from American Manufacturer and Iron World, dated 1900:

A new system of fighting fires is being perfected in the Brooklyn navy yard. It was found that salt water not only saves supply of fresh water, but will put out a fire much more quickly than fresh water will. The plant now being constructed will follow, on a larger scale, the plan of the one placed in the Norfolk navy yard some two years ago. At the Brooklyn yard the supply of water will be taken from the river at a point three feet below low water mark and will be carried by gravity through a main thirty inches in diameter to a new electric power house, where the reservoir and two driving pumps will be situated. Each of these pumps will be able to deliver, from 3,000 to 4,000 gallons a minute, through 14 or 15 streams of water, which can be thrown almost immediately upon receipt of the fire signal. This salt water method, where conditions permit, diminishes the chance of frozen fire hydrants in winter.

I found further information in Harry Granick’s Underneath New York. He explains that in 1908, New York City’s Department of Water Supply, Gas and Electricity constructed a series of high-pressure water systems to supply the city’s fire hydrant system. Manhattan and Brooklyn were covered in three zones, and 

There is a fourth zone which covers the Brooklyn Navy Yard. This was built by the United States Government. It too is complete with high pressure mains and a pumping station. The system is connected to the Brooklyn high pressure main, so that, should the station break down, the valve separating the two systems can be lifted to permit the Brooklyn station to furnish water at high pressure.

The pump house is still something of a mystery to me, because the Navy Yard Building Survey has it being built in 1961, just a few years before the U.S. Government shut down the Navy Yard, and almost six decades after the initial high-pressure hydrant system was built. So, was this an entirely new structure, or were the machines relocated to the new pump house, or was it built around the existing pumps? 

It does, however, answer the mystery of this post, another building I’d sketched that was a FDNY pump house, but at the time I couldn’t figure out exactly what it was pumping. I love it when things circle around like this. Eventually, all mysteries can be solved!