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 . . .