By far the most visible clue that the 28-acre Riverbank State Park sits atop a wastewater treatment plant

An abandoned tool shed in Riverside Park

While this building was not its original home, Station M existed at least as far back as 1863, when it was one of 14 post offices on the island of Manhattan: the main office plus Stations A through N, excluding I. Half a century later, a carrier from this station unwittingly delivered a package bomb to a local man. The NY Times report on the incident featured the following headline and sub-headlines:

BOMB BIG ENOUGH TO WRECK BUILDING
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Jacques Franck of 709 West 170th Street Gets a Box of "Socks."
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DENIES HAVING ENEMIES

Few . . . realize the extent of bomb-making and the illegal traffic in explosives in a city like New York. At least 200 bombs and infernal machines are found here by the police every year . . . They are, of course, the bombs and infernal machines which do not explode. The total does not take into account crimes of the sort that are successful. Other explosives are seized by the city authorities in sufficient quantities to warrant special provisions being made for their storage and destruction. In the yard back of the headquarters of the Fire Department, in Sixty-seventh Street, near Third Avenue, there is a small building covered with sheet iron and bearing a sign which reads: "Magazine—Danger!" Behind the padlocked doors is a collection of contraband explosives that would amaze the majority of New Yorkers.

When a bomb or infernal machine is found by the police it is turned over to the Bureau of Combustibles of the Fire Department. The hazardous task falls to the bureau employees of investigating the dangerous package. . . .

The question naturally arises: What becomes of the contraband explosives? A favorite method of getting rid of them is to gather them periodically, place them on one of the municipal boats, and have them dumped into one of the rivers. The spot for depositing them is usually the "Black Hole" at Hell Gate. There the rocks and swift current soon make them harmless, even for fishes.

Until it was removed during the ongoing construction here at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center, a plaque could be found on the ground at about the spot I've circled in red. It marked the former location of home plate at Hilltop Park, where the New York Highlanders (a.k.a the New York Yankees) played from 1903 to 1912. We're looking straight out into center field in this photo; using the diagonal left edge of the concrete to approximate the base line, we can roughly estimate the location of third base (now somewhere inside the building at left), where a stealing Ty Cobb slid into Jimmy Austin in one of baseball's most famous photographs. (Here's the story behind that image, "the greatest action picture ever made on the ball field".)

at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center

I thought it was 1600.

But I like to imagine otherwise.

Merengue

Built 1913-14

One of several such murals we've seen

Not long after navigating the crazy underpass seen in the previous post, I found myself atop the aforementioned exit ramps, snaking along this narrow, forgotten-looking pedestrian path.