The Reanimation Library in Brooklyn, N.Y. is a
small, independent library that came to Proteus Gowanus as part of our theme
year, Libraries. It is a collection of
books that have fallen out of mainstream circulation. Outdated and discarded, they have been culled
from thrift stores, stoop sales, and throw-away piles across the country and
given new life as resource material for artists, writers, and other cultural
archeologists. The Reanimation Library
is comprised of materials that are generally considered to be “outdated,”
“obsolete” and lacking the privileged cultural status and/or market value that
adhere to such artifacts as first editions or manuscripts. It includes items that, due to their age and
their pedestrian nature, are often discarded from other library collections and
that in some cases have never been catalogued. Many of the books in the collection contain
significant amounts of graphic material; examples of these include, but are not
limited to: textbooks, pedagogical
aides, “how-to” books, atlases, scientific, medical, and technical manuals,
government documents, books about the natural world, space exploration, and
urban planning. The Reanimation Library
is designed to provide source material for individuals embarking on and engaged
in creative projects. Find hours and
location at: http://proteusgowanus.org/reanimation-library/
Proteus Gowanus
is an interdisciplinary gallery and reading room. Named for the Greek sea god of change and the
adjacent Gowanus Canal, Proteus Gowanus acts as an interpreter of culture and
place, deepening the community’s sense of context and connection. Find hours, location and list of exhibits and
events at: http://proteusgowanus.org/
New York City's first bridge, known as the King's Bridge, was constructed in 1693.
Fitted with stone abutments and a timber
deck, it spanned Spuyten Duyvil Creek between Manhattan and the Bronx. It was demolished in 1917. The oldest bridge that is open to passengers
or vehicles is the Brooklyn Bridge, which opened in 1883. The oldest bridge still standing in New York
City is the High Bridge, which spans the Harlem River between Manhattan and the
Bronx; it opened in 1848. The High
Bridge was originally an aqueduct, built to bring water to the city. It is not currently open, but is being
rehabilitated for pedestrian and bicycle use.
strait
noun 1. Often, straits. ( used with a singular verb )
a narrow passage of water connecting two large bodies of water. 2. Often, straits. a position of difficulty,
distress, or need 3. Archaic.
a narrow passage or area. 4. an isthmus.
adjective Archaic. 5. narrow: Strait is the gate. 6. affording little space; confined in area.
7. strict, as in requirements or principles.
Golden Gate Bridge
The Golden Gate
is the North American strait that
connects San Francisco Bay to the Pacific
Ocean.
1846 Captain John Fremont declares California’s
independence from Mexico and names the mile-wide entrance to the San Francisco
Bay as Chrysopylae, which means Golden Gate in Greek.
1919 San Francisco
Board of Supervisors tell San Francisco City Engineer Michael O’Shaughnessy to
proceed with the study of the feasibility of a bridge across the Golden Gate
Strait.December 9, 1929 Two dedication ceremonies were held to mark the start of borings for the Golden Gate Bridge tower piers at Fort Scott in San Francisco starting at 1pm, and two hours later on the Marin County side.
November 20, 1936 (this has also been cited as occurring on November 18 and 19, 1936): The two sections of the Golden Gate Bridge's main span were joined.
April 27, 1937 The Last Rivet Ceremony - A ceremony of completion was held at midspan. With hundreds of on lookers, ironworker Edward “Iron Horse” Stanley, the man who had driven the first rivet on the Bridge, took his rivet gun and drove that rivet….and the golden rivet disintegrated right before everyone’s eyes.
May 27, 1937 Golden Gate
Bridge opens to pedestrian traffic.
http://goldengatebridge.org/research/dates.phpHell Gate is a narrow tidal strait in the East River in New York City in the United States. It separates Astoria, Queens from Randall's Island/Wards Island (formerly two separate islands that are now joined by landfill). It was spanned in 1917 by the New York Connecting Railroad Bridge (now called the Hell Gate Bridge), which connects Wards Island and Queens. The bridge provides a direct rail link between New England and New York City. In 1936 it was spanned by the Triborough Bridge, allowing vehicular traffic to pass between Manhattan, the Bronx, and Queens. The name "Hell Gate" is a corruption of the Dutch phrase Hellegat, which could mean either "hell's hole" or "bright gate/passage", which was originally applied to the entirety of the East River. The strait was described in the journals of Dutch explorer Adriaen Block, who is the first European known to have navigated the strait, during his 1614 voyage aboard the Onrust. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hell_Gate NOTE that Linda Fairstein's book, Hell Gate, is a mystery novel with the added attraction of much New York history.
Construction of the Hell Gate project began in 1912, two years after the first trains
traveled under the Hudson River tunnels to Pennsylvania Station in
Manhattan. Toward the end of 1915, the
two trajectories of the steel arches from the Astoria and Ward's Island
anchorages met high above the Hell Gate. The arch bridge, the two smaller bridges and the
viaduct were completed in September 1916. By 1917, the first Pennsylvania
Railroad train - the Federal Express service between Washington and Boston -
went over the Hell Gate Bridge, completing the first uninterrupted rail service
between the two cities. Buttressed by a
1991 article in The New Yorker on what Moynihan called "a great
engineering miracle," Congress appropriated $55 million to repair and
refurbish the Hell Gate Bridge. A unique
color was even selected for the http://goldengatebridge.org/research/dates.php
"April is the cruellest month . . ." begins the first line of The Waste Land, the
signature modernist poem by T. S. Eliot.
The 15th of April could easily be named
the cruelest day of April, as it is the annual deadline for Americans to mail
their tax returns, and checks, to the Internal Revenue Service. To mark National Poetry Month on past tax
days, the Academy of American Poets and the American Poetry & Literacy
Project distributed thousands of free copies of The Waste Land at
selected post offices across the country to taxpayers rushing to make the
deadline. Eliot's poem, a landmark of
twentieth century poetry, was published in 1922 to a fire-storm of reviews—some
praising the work for capturing the confusion of the "modern" age
following World War I and some cursing its difficult, discontinuous voice. Words and images in the first line and
elsewhere in The Waste Land echo Walt
Whitman's great poem, "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd."
Whitman's poem commemorates the death of
Abraham Lincoln, who was assassinated while lilacs were in bloom. http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/5628
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