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!

Jaquelyn

Back to life drawing. I can't remember the last time I went. It felt great to be back at it. The model's name was Jaquelyn. I was back at Minerva's Studio. This place has been around forever, and is a great place to draw. But like many small outfits in this city, it's struggling to survive, financially. They have a Go Fund Me page which is a very worthwhile cause.

Kittery Maine Wharf

I recently spent a weekend in Kittery, Maine, working with the dance company The Bang Group. In my downtime, I spent some time down on the wharf doing some drawings. I've spent most of the year at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, which was great, but I was excited to work someplace different. Of course, it turned out to be more boats and maritime stuff, including another Navy Yard!

Evening Light

The tugboat Evening Light being serviced in Dry Dock 1 at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

From tugboatinformation.com:

Built in 1975, by Halter Marine Incorporated of New Orleans, Louisiana (hull #437) as the Frederick E. Bouchard for the Bouchard Transportation Company of Melville, New York. In 2015, the Bouchard Transportation Company renamed the tug as the Evening Light. Powered by two, sixteen cylinder, General Motors EMD diesel engines. She is a twin screw tug, rated at 3,900 horsepower. Her electrical serviced is provided by two, 99kW generator sets. The tug's capacities are 79,515 gallons of fuel.

Railroad Transfer Bridge

At the northeast edge of the Brooklyn Navy Yard, at the edge of Wallabout Basin, stands this hulking, rusting ruin, Structure 713. It's a railroad transfer bridge, or float bridge.

These structures were used for transporting freight trains across rivers. There would be a floating pontoon bridge - secured to land on one end, and floating on the other - with train tracks on it. A barge carrying freight cars would be ferried across the water where they could be lifted or roll directly onto the tracks. This system was developed in the mid 1800s in Maryland and Pennsylvania, and soon spread to other cities along the Eastern Seaboard.

It may seem labor-intensive to load a railroad car onto a barge and then back onto land, but consider that in New York, a freight train in Hoboken, NJ would have to travel north along the Hudson River nearly to Albany to cross a bridge to the east side to get to New York City. It could take anywhere from 12 to 36 hours to make a journey that modern commuter trains make in 20 minutes. This route was known as "The Selkirk Hurdle," Selkirk being the location of the nearest Hudson River rail crossing, some 130 miles north of NYC. Float bridges significantly reduced this time, being especially useful for transporting perishable products like fruit and vegetables.

The Williamsburg Bridge in the background

The Navy Yard Transfer Bridge was built in 1941. After the Navy Yard was demilitarized, a private company called Seatrain Lines took over use of the bridge and operated it from 1969 until it went out of business in 1983. It was last used in 1995 by a subway car rebuilder.

The pontoons holding the railroad tracks have long sunk and the whole structure is in decay. Float bridges are not in common use any more, though there is one still operating near the Brooklyn Army Terminal in Sunset Park. Another one very similar to the Navy Yard bridge sits on the Hudson River at 69th St., protected by Landmark Status but similarly rusting away. And there is one in Long Island City, also inactive but preserved and refurbished at Gantry State Park.

One of the things I've discovered since starting to write and research for this blog is that no matter how particular or obscure the subject matter, there is almost always someone out there who has done obsessively detailed research on the subject and built a website or message board devoted to it. The Trainweb site has an extensive history of the BNY rail system here, a list of all NYC-area float bridges here, and a glossary of terms that explains all the technical elements of these systems here.