Like the erstwhile Morris Park station, this battered ex-depot ("French Renaissance in style, it might have been the royal stable of a French king") is a Cass Gilbert-designed relic from the days of the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad's ill-fated Harlem River Branch.
All its flaws called out for everyone to see, like it's a pledge at some horrible fat-circling sorority
Welcome to the Bronx Grit Chamber, where solids (everything from sand and gravel to turtles and dogs) are removed from the sewage of the western Bronx as it makes its way toward the Wards Island Wastewater Treatment Plant.
Here's some great info on NYC's wastewater treatment system. One of the most taken-for-granted pieces of the city's infrastructure, it somehow makes the filth and waste of more than 8 million disgusting people magically disappear! (Except on rainy days.)
Pass the Squishy: "Opened in the fall of 2008 by the New York Foundling, a 140-year-old foster care agency, Haven is the first school in the city designed to serve children from broken families."
Built in the mid-1800s, this former rail line had become "a combination dumping ground and open sewer" by the latter part of the 20th century. The few trains that still traveled the line in those days apparently had to be outfitted with snowplows to clear the tracks of potentially damaging debris. In 2009, the city pumped out 625,000 gallons of standing water from a mile-long stretch, and removed 45 tons of garbage. The rails are now gone, as you can tell, but the line still sees some occasional traffic now and then.
Nope — it's a Con Ed substation in disguise! The phony facade looks very clean and well maintained, except, oddly, for one thing: the paint is peeling off all the doors.
Mister Softee!
While we're on the subject, check out this trippy, dreamy version of the Mister Softee song played by a truck with a defective music box.
I recorded it last summer but forgot to post it at the time. If you're not familiar with the song, you can listen to a standard rendition (and see the lyrics) here.
That's the official name of this particular shade (one of only seven colors of paint in the NYC bridge palette) brightening up the trusses of the westbound Bruckner (Expressway and Boulevard) span over the Northeast Corridor.
Westchester Avenue and the Pelham Line — Aluminum Green, if I'm not mistaken — crossing the Bronx River, as seen from Concrete Plant Park
Here we have yet another Cass Gilbert-designed New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad station, this one "a sublime glazed terra-cotta temple" "being slowly crushed by the boot of time."
in Starlight Park, named for an old amusement park that once stood nearby
174th Street, viewed from the bridge in the previous photo
That's the old Westchester Avenue station in the background.
