In the quiet cold of early morning I stand, huddled on a dock that extends over the Hudson, enveloped by an eerie mist that obscures New Jersey and dampens my skin. Weeping willows line a cobbled walkway where joggers and dog–walkers grant me their smiles as they healthfully cross my path. As I listen to the wind whip through the reeds I shudder—I hate this place, and I’m ready to go back to Broadway, where there is no pretense of calm.
This stretch of Riverside Park, which extends from 59th to 72nd Street, was only recently restored. Formerly a haven for kids who wanted to get high in mid–day, the park today is deciedly less cool. I can’t be bothered to break out my laptop, but I wouldn’t be surprised if I found that the city had equipped the park with free wi–fi (presumably, so that I could browse the web while sipping my coffee, purchased at the oh–so–convenient outdoor espresso bar set up on 72nd Street.)
The impetus for the recent transformation lies a few feet from the pathway, whose base is anchored in the shallow water of the Hudson. This is the 69th Street Transfer Bridge, also called the Gantry, whose preservation was mandated in the National Register of Historic Places in June 2003. The Gantry was an integral part of the transportation of railroad cars from the New York Central Railroad to barges that would float them across the Hudson River in the early 1910s. The Gantry marked an industrial innovation: safer and more efficient than anything before it, the transfer bridge became a blueprint for various subsequent constructions by the Long Island Railroad.
I leave the dock and walk south, onto a stone overpass with names like “Canadian Pacific Railroad Company” and “Erie Canal” etched into the walkway. This bridge takes a deliberately roundabout route to extend over the Hudson, defying the myth that a bridge provides the quickest path from A to B. The functionalist engineers of the Gantry would doubtless find this modern embellishment insufferable. I note a sign reminding passersby that the reeds are ornamental, and not to be touched. Up ahead there is a polished railcar, crawling with inquisitive toddlers watched by their chatting mothers. Well, there’s one who is more captivated by the juice box he is stuffing with fistfuls of ornamental grass.
I slump into the surprising comfort of the heavy plastic beach chairs out over the river. The clouds have parted to let through strands of sunlight, enough to warm my face. Okay... maybe I don’t hate it here. And as the warm feeling settles I feel a piercing twinge of betrayal.
The renovated Gantry strikes me as artificial. The Trump Towers emerging meters away render its glory hollow and impotent. Riverside Boulevard is lined with noisy cranes and construction trucks. Descendents of the Gantry Bridge, the cranes’ vitality pays homage to the aging behemoth. I feel for the dilapidated bridge, abandoned as a relic of American progress, irrelevant in an age that has outgrown the railroad and its promise of the frontier. While the polished railcar and the pathway mean to honor this era and its dreams, to me it feels as though they’ve robbed the Gantry of its usefulness, and relegated it to a sympathetic spot on the sidelines of history.
The Gantry has been stabilized, but not entirely restored. If all goes according to plan, the transfer bridge will be reintroduced as a stop on a commuter ferry that will act as an alternative to west–side subways. The waterway will be re–imagined as a creative means for New Yorkers to get to work and back. The new Gantry will aim to maintain a level of efficiency that aligns with our modern sensibilities.
After a while the wind starts biting at my collar, the sun hides behind a formidable cloud, and I decide it’s time to go. Still full of angst, I wonder what it is about this spot that irks me so. Somewhere between the Olympic Flame Diner on 59th and West End and the American Apparel on Broadway, I recognize the origin of the feeling that’s been nagging at my insides: when I was younger, my mother and I used to frequent a community garden that we called the secret garden. Though I understood that it was not actually secret, I still felt as if we had gotten away with something when we re–discovered it time and again. Tucked away in this endless city was a little unmapped spot, something cherished by the few who knew about it. Eventually our visits became less frequent, and I shed the illusion that the plot of land was secret. The garden was public, officially so, as suggested by a municipal plaque giving it another name and another owner—the city of New York.
Part of living here is acknowledging that there is way more city than you can imagine, and that none of it is yours to discover. The density, of peoples and cultures and enterprise, means that the city is in constant flux, shedding old skins before it fully inhabits new ones. The part of me that hates the idea of the Gantry restoration wants to make this whirlwind of progress and growth stand still. Can the need to preserve something never possessed ever be reasoned away?
Above: A photo of the 69th Street Transfer Bridge, also called the Gantry, which was recently restored as part of a historical preservation project
DANIELLE WEINER-BRONNER is a junior at Barnard College. She can be reached at dw2283@barnard.edu.