“Hello” we called on the new Gowanus. Our voices echoed back.
This was not the Gowanus Canal of the last thirty years. It also was almost unrecognizable. Bulkheads stretched high above our heads. And then the final blow: high rise buildings soaring toward the sky, creating a new canyon within the heart of Brooklyn.
For the first time since September 12, 2018, I was paddling on the water of the Gowanus Canal, passing next to the open Carroll Street Bridge. The historic retractable bridge which has been opening and closing since 1889, now sits off the water on its tracks on the west bank. Nuzzled up close to the brick Bridge tender’s house on a cobblestone street closed to traffic since June 2021, the bridge stayed ashore as the Superfund cleanup by the EPA wound its way down the waterway.
Structural issues were found that made it unsafe to operate the bridge. Another of those only-on-Gowanus moments. With the bridge marooned on its tracks on the west shore, the waters of the canal are an impenetrable barrier to the businesses on the eastern streets. Suffering from a lack of engineering drawings, and very few companies with any expertise rehabbing retractable bridges, the last update said plans were due by August 2024. No news may not be good news: As of my last visit, the bridge seems to be closed for the duration.
At Dirty Precious, a bar and restaurant on Third Avenue, the lack of the crossing has been a hardship. Not all the map programs have shown the crossing to be closed. When potential customers call from the west bank, not all want the detour to another bridge and end up skipping going east. It’s a loss to the neighborhood, and New York history buffs. I’ll never forget the first time I watched it open under the skilled hand of Gowanus’ Chicken Man, bridge tender Leonard Thomas. During his hours waiting to open and close the canal’s bridges, he wrote “Cookin’ with the Chicken Man,” a collection of his best recipes. Hence the moniker. As the bridge slid backwards further onto land, the wooden deck formed its own dead man’s plank, a prod of a sword would be the only thing to make you step off into the black mayonnaise of gunk in its depths. Leonard stood on its edge, gazing at a landscape that now seems to be a lifetime ago. And it nearly is.
Open House New York Weekend, an annual festival that opens 250+ places across the five boroughs, gave the Gowanus Dredgers the chance to launch their kayaks from their Second Street boathouse on the Gowanus Canal for the first time since the cleanup began. It was also my first time back on the head of the canal since that day in 2018, when I joined a very cool Gowanus poetry reading of Lorine Niedicker to a Brooklyn Book Festival audience above the canoes on the Carroll Street bridge. The video and photographs show a much more desolate locale.
There is very little left from that day. The Alex Figliolia building adorned with graffiti is long gone with 420 Carroll Street in its place, gargantuan 16- and 21-story towers dwarfing the Carroll Street Bridge and bringing 360 apartments into the mix. A lottery is underway for 89 apartments, all rent stabilized and income restricted, with 72 that are targeted at households of one to seven people earning between $31,200 and $115,560 a year. This is affordable housing New York style.
Alex Figliola to 420 Carroll Street
I took an hour before my paddle to walk through Powerhouse Arts, the spectacular venue that was the former Brooklyn Rapid Transit Powerhouse, also known as The Batcave. The monumental structure dates back to at least 1902, and was also one of the most polluted pieces of property along the shoreline. Philanthropist Joshua Rechnitz designated $180 million to repurpose the 170,000-square-foot industrial structure into a premier location for the arts overlooking the Gowanus. The “Grand Hall” on the third floor, where the turbines were once located producing power for Brooklyn’s above-ground train system, is now a spectacular open gathering space for exhibitions, large installations and art staging, performances, art fairs, events, and potentially, movies. Original graffiti artwork adorns its walls, remnants of the Batcave. Looking out across the canal, nothing approaches its age with the exception of the Carroll Street bridge.
Going north past the bridge, the canyon truly began with walls closing off the water from the shoreline. If any of us had flipped our kayak, there was no way out of the water without swimming back the way we came. There was no way out. The metal bulkheads may as well have been the limestone cliffs of black canyon. There was no escape. I dread what will happen. There were no ladders; There were no rescue rings. I tightened my life jacket straps.
We were allowed to take our canoes from the Third Street bridge to the head of the canal, passing the open Carroll Street bridge and under the deck of the Union Street bridge before seeing the torn, worn American flag marking the Gowanus Flushing Tunnel Pumping Station and Gate House on Butler Street. With a cleanup price estimated to be over $2 billion, you think we could have enough pride to put up a new flag. The Flushing Tunnel is an integral part of the cleanup, bringing over 300,000 gallons of clean, fresh water from Buttermilk Channel of the East River into the Gowanus eco-system. Within this canyon, on a Sunday in October 2024, there was no sound of the city. The new high rises, devoid of people, were silent barriers, bouncing our voices back to us in eery echoes that were so out of place, but one of the coolest things I have had happen in the jungle of the city. Echoes. In Brooklyn. Inconceivable. And short lived. Once the apartments fill, life along the canal will be a new experience.
Sometimes I really miss the decrepit canal.
