27/1/13 – “Follow The Compass Not The Clock”

Decided to have a down day today so I slept in and contemplated a new life motto. With inspiration from Cameron before he left, and after much deliberation and soul searching, I decided on “follow the compass not the clock”. Now to live up to it!

I am ashamed to report that the first thing I did to achieve my newly conceived vision of Nirvana was to clean the flat! That took most of the day, which was an appalling waste of time because, although cold, it was blue skies and sunshine outside all day today.

Meanwhile, Peter cycled around Randall and Ward Islands and his account of his adventures is listed below.

Peter’s Randall’s Island Adventure

‘The weather today (Sunday) was a replica of yesterday, cold but clear with blue skies and sunshine and views for miles in all directions … but we had chores to do … so we decided to stay in for most of the day. However by 3pm I had had enough of being confined indoors … so I took off on my bike to explore the Triborough Bridge and Randall’s Island.

 The Robert F. Kennedy Bridge (formerly the Triborough Bridge) dominates all the views of the East River that we can see from our apartment. It is actually rather more than just a bridge. It is a complex of three bridges, a viaduct, and 14 miles of approach roads that together connect three of New York’s five boroughs (Manhattan, Queens, and the Bronx). Think of it as a giant ‘Y’. The Manhattan branch of the ‘Y’ is the Harlem River Lift Bridge, which links to the Harlem River Drive, the FDR Drive, and 125th Street, Harlem's commercial and cultural centre.

The other arm of the ‘Y’ is constituted by the Bronx Crossing. This bridge leads motorists to points north via the Bruckner and Deegan expressways and, more locally, to the neighbourhoods of the South Bronx and the Port Morris Industrial Area.

The bottom of the ‘Y’, and the longest of the three spans of the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge, is the East River Suspension Bridge to Queens. It connects with the Grand Central Parkway and the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and also to Astoria's residential areas, restaurants, and shops.

The three branches of the ‘Y’ all meet on Randall's Island, where an interchange and two toll plazas sort out traffic flowing in 12 directions and provide access to the island itself.

In addition to the RFK Bridge(s) complex the Amtrak railroad viaduct approach to the Hell Gate Bridge also passes over Randall’s island. The viaduct allows trains to get from Queens to the South Bronx. When it opened in 1916 the Hell Gate rail bridge was the longest steel arch bridge in the world.

In addition to its role as ‘host’ of the Hell Gate rail bridge and RFK Bridge, Randall’s Island is also home to the New York City Fire Department's training academy, an NYC DEP Wastewater Treatment Plant, homeless shelters, the Manhattan Psychiatric Centre and other public facilities. The majority of the island, however, is city parkland, much of it given over to public use as baseball diamonds, rugby and soccer fields.

My self-imposed mission for the afternoon was to cycle around the island and take some pictures of the bridges and other facilities on the island. As it turned out there was a lot more to see and take in than I had anticipated. For a start I discovered that Randall’s Island is not actually one single separate island at all!

In 1855, the City of New York acquired what were then three separate land masses in the East River between Manhattan, Queens and the Bronx: Randall's Island, named after its previous owner Jonathan Randal; Ward's Island, named after Jasper and Bartholomew Ward and a marsh called Sunken Meadows. Over the years, debris from construction projects filled in the space between the three islands so that today there is (to all intents and purposes) just one big island.

Randall’s Island is one of New York’s most accessible islands. Traffic can reach it off the several Triborough bridge exits and pedestrians can access it from the East 103rd Street footbridge in Manhattan, the Triborough Bridge entrance on East 125th Street in Manhattan and Astoria Boulevard in Queens.

 

As you will have gathered from the foregoing discussion, the most notable facility on the island is the RFK (Triborough) Bridge. The bridge was built between October 1929 and July 1936 but plans for connecting Manhattan, Queens and the Bronx had been around for a long time prior to that.

In fact they were first announced by Edward A. Byrne, chief engineer of the New York City Department of Plant and Structures, way back in 1916. But although its construction had long been recommended by City officials, the Triborough Bridge did not receive any funding until 1925, when the city appropriated money for surveys, test borings and structural plans. It took another four years for the actual project to finally get the go ahead and then, in a stroke of exquisitely bad timing, construction began on Black Friday in 1929.

By the end of that year the Triborough bridge's outlook, along with those of most other big infrastructure projects, began to look bleak. The city called in Othmar Ammann, the famously efficient designer of the George Washington bridge (and many other landmark bridge projects) to help simplify (and reduce the cost of) the project. Ammann collapsed the original two-deck roadway into one, requiring lighter towers, and thus, lighter piers.

These revisions saved $10 million on the towers alone, but even such huge cost savings would not have been enough to save the project itself if FDR and his New Deal had not come along.

The formidable team of Fiorello LaGuardia and Robert Moses were able to attract New Deal money to resurrect the project in the early 1930s and the bridge was finally opened to traffic on July 11, 1936. 

The total cost of the bridge was more than $60 million, greater even than that of the Hoover Dam. It was one of the largest public works projects of the Great Depression. The American Society of Civil Engineers designated the Triborough Bridge Project as a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark in 1986.

[Trivia Note: During the Cold War, a sign on the bridge informed travellers, "In event of attack, drive off bridge", New York Times columnist William Safire wrote in 2008 that "the somewhat macabre sign must have drawn a wry smile from millions of motorists."]

On November 19, 2008, pursuant to a request made by the Kennedy family, the Triborough Bridge was officially renamed after Robert F. Kennedy, who served New York as a senator, 40 years after his assassination.

But the RFK Bridge is not the only important feature on Randall's Island. The island also functions as a major recreational and cultural facility for the people of New York. The Randall’s Island Park Alliance was founded in 1992 as a public-private partnership to develop Randall's Island Park.

RIPA works with the City and with local communities to provide an innovative and exciting destination through a wide range of sports venues, cultural

events and environmental exploration. RIPA's signature sports facility on Randall's Island, Icahn Stadium, was opened on April 23, 2005. The Stadium, a world-class track & field facility, is capable of hosting local, regional and national events.

On May 31, 2008, Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt broke the world record for the men's 100-meter dash at the stadium during the Fourth Annual Reebok Grand Prix with a "lightning" speed time of 9.72 seconds. 

In May 2010, RIPA and the NYC Department of Parks and Recreation completed the construction of a further 60 athletic fields on the island to support a greater variety of sports, including football, lacrosse, field hockey, and rugby amongst the sports already played at the Park, plus soccer, baseball and softball.

As a a result Randall's Island Park now has the most athletic fields of any New York City park.

The island currently also has almost 5 miles of waterfront pathways and a greenway under the Amtrak Hell Gate Viaduct, which will offer cyclists a connection to the South Bronx Greenway, is scheduled to be completed by late 2013.  A newly renovated Randall's Island Golf Centre opened in 2008.

The new 25-acre (100,000 m2) $500,000 renovation will have a two-tier indoor/outdoor, 82-stall driving range, 320 yards (290 m) of landing area, a 36-hole mini-golf course, grass tees, a short game area with sand bunker, PGA instructors, and 9 batting cages.

The Randall's Island Tennis Centre opened in July, 2009. It features 20 courts, 10 har-tru and 10 rubberized hard (5 indoor), along with a cafe, pro shop, fitness facilities and locker rooms. From May–October, 10 courts are reserved for NYC Parks Tennis Permit holders during the daylight hours.

In the winter, all 15 outdoor courts are bubbled for use by club members. The Tennis Centre is also the home to the New York Sportimes of World Team Tennis and the John McEnroe Tennis Academy.

Other regular outdoors programming at Randall's Island includes visits by Cirque du Soleil, a summer concert series (which has consisted of concerts such as Electric Zoo Festival, Dave Matthews Band and Governors Ball), and art exhibits (such as The Frieze Art Fair, and FLOW.11 & FLOW.12), as well as wetland, nature and gardening programs conducted by RIPA. Additional programming includes Run the River 5K, which takes place each October. As part of RIPA’s improvements on the island, two natural environments, a salt marsh and a freshwater wetland, have been established. Through the process of excavating over 20,000 cubic yards (15,000 m3) of debris, installing clean sand, and planting native marsh grasses, 4 acres (16,000 m2) of salt marsh has been created surrounding the Little Hell Gate Inlet on the western edge of the Island. Just across from the salt marsh, 4 acres (16,000 m2) of freshwater wetlands were also restored. After the removal of almost 15,000 cubic yards (11,000 m3) of debris and fill, the freshwater wetland site was planted with native herbaceous, shrub, and tree species, such as switchgrass, aster, dogwood, and oak. The restoration projects play a crucial role in an innovative Park-wide filtration system that collects storm water from the adjacent sports fields, pathways and paved areas and channels it through the Wetlands, where the new plants naturally filter pollutants before reaching the East River and the Long Island Sound. In a further boost to the island’s ‘green’ credentials the NYC Department of Parks & Recreation recently approved a $1 million contract with Natural Currents Energy Services to build a hybrid renewable energy park on the island.  The park will combine solar, wind, and tidal energy and is expected to produce 200 kW of energy to power the island's facilities. The project will include a solar-powered marine research and information kiosk open to visitors of the island, expected to be completed in September 2013. I spent 3 hours cycling around the island, by which time it was getting dark and really cold, so I decided to head for home. On the way back I stopped briefly at a lovely little park on the corner of East 88^th Street and East End Ave to examine the colonial era Gracie Mansion. In 1799, a rosperous New York merchant named Archibald Gracie built a country house overlooking a bend in the East River, five miles north of the City. Financial failure forced Gracie to sell his house to Joseph Foulke in 1823, and in 1857, the house came into the possession of Noah Wheaton. The City of New York acquired the estate in 1896, incorporating its 11 acres of grounds into the newly-formed Carl Schurz Park. After decades of use as a concession stand and restrooms for the park, Gracie Mansion was restored and became the first home of the Museum of the City of New York until the late 1930’s. When the Museum moved to a larger building, Gracie Mansion became a historic house museum run by the Parks Department. Parks Commissioner Robert Moses convinced City authorities to designate it as the official residence of the Mayor, and in 1942, Fiorello H. La Guardia moved in. The house was enlarged in 1966 with the addition of the Susan E. Wagner Wing, which includes a grand ballroom and two intimate reception rooms. The Gracie Mansion Conservancy was established in 1981. It is a private not-for-profit corporation established to preserve, maintain and enhance Gracie Mansion - one of the oldest surviving wood structures in Manhattan and a member of The Historic House Trust. The Conservancy's mission is to raise funds to restore the historic structure and acquire furnishings that illustrate the rich history of New York; improve the surrounding landscape and gardens; and provide educational services, including publications and tours and under its guidance, the first major restoration was undertaken between 1981 and 1984.  In 2002, the interior and exterior were again restored, and the house was transformed into the "People's House" with increased accessibility to the public and to City agencies. It has also been used to accommodate visiting officials and dignitaries, such as former guests First Lady Rosalynn Carter and President Nelson Mandela. The house may only be used for official city business. Only visiting public officials and the mayor's family may reside with the mayor at the mansion, even for a single overnight stay. As a result, Mayor Rudy Giuliani was unable to have his then-girlfriend live with him (because they were not married), because it would have violated using a taxpayer-funded home for a private citizen. Giuliani was forced to relocate. Likewise, current mayor Michael Bloomberg, has never resided at Gracie Mansion, although he uses it for meetings and events and has used the Mansion as a place for official visitors to stay while in the city. At the beginning of Bloomberg's term he initiated a major restoration of the mansion, funded by an anonymous donor, suspected of being the billionaire mayor himself.