Flushing River still exists, though it is a far different
watercourse than it was originally. When the town of Flushing was
settled in 1645 along the marshy streams in what is now Flushing
Meadows/Corona Park, the creek ran from Kew Gardens (where the old site
of the headwaters of the creek is marked by the street Vleigh Place,
after the Dutch for Valley).
The marshy land watered by the creek
in Flushing Meadows, which today is a green and landscaped expanse—was
famously turned into a giant ash dump in the 19th century, run by the
Brooklyn Ash Removal company under “Fishhooks” McCarthy.
In the novel The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald describes how the area looked in the 1920s:
is a valley of ashes—a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into
ridges and hills and grotesque gardens, where ashes take the forms of
houses and chimneys and rising smoke and finally, with a transcendent
effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery
air….
The valley of ashes is bounded on one side by a small foul
river, and, when the drawbridge is up to let barges through, the
passengers on waiting trains can stare at the dismal scene for as long
as half an hour.”
Other than the ashes, swamps occupied
the land, fed by the marshy drainage ditch of Flushing River. But in
just three years, between 1936 and 1939, the city covered the vast
fields of ashes, dug out a new channel for the river, filled in the
swamps, created the new Meadow Lake, and landscaped 1,200 acres to
create the utopian World’s Fair of 1939.
Robert Moses, who was a
driving force behind the transformation, wrote that his teams “leveled
the ash mountains, and rats big enough to wear saddles, with white
whiskers a foot long, gazed wistfully at the bulldozers and junkies who
disturbed their ancient solitary reign.” By 1939 it was impossible to
see any evidence of either the ash landfill, or of the natural
topography that had replaced it.
For more information, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flushing_River.
The article mentions that Flushing Creek received water from Fly Creek,
Ireland Creek, and Horse Brook; please email me if you know anything
more about any of these other watercourses.
See posts about Flushing Creek
Fascinating web site! Thanks for doing it.
ReplyDeleteOne correction with regard to Flushing Creek: Vleigh Place is NOT in Kew Gardens, west of the river, but east of the river in Kew Gardens Hills. It runs at an angle across the later-imposed street grid from Union Turnpike north and east to Main Street.