Eat the City(97)



18 “He-e-e-e-e-e-ere’s your fine Rocka-a-way clams”: Jessica B. Harris, High on the Hog: A Culinary Journey from Africa to America (New York: Bloomsbury, 2011), 126.

19 the son of Mr. and Mrs. Moles Lynn: William N. Zeisel, Jr., “Shark!!! And Other Sport Fish Once Abundant in New York Harbor,” Seaport Magazine, Winter/Spring 1990. 230 In 1800, oyster houses advertised: John Waldman, Heartbeats in the Muck: The History of Sea Life and Environment of New York Harbor (New York: Lyons Press, 1999), 40–41.

20 “All along the East River are places”: Ingersoll, 1881. Quoted in Clyde L. MacKenzie Jr., The Fisheries of Raritan Bay (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1992), 66.

21 “anyone with a length of string”: William N. Zeisel Jr., “Shark!!! And Other Sport Fish” Seaport Magazine, Winter/Spring 1990.

22 When the mackerel: Norman Brouwer, “The New York Fisheries,” Seaport Magazine, Winter/Spring 1990.

23 “Hey, best here!”: Harpo Marx, with Rowland Barber, Harpo Speaks … About New York (New York: Little Bookroom, 1961).

24 The Dutch built deep canals: Gerard T. Koeppel, Water for Gotham (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 14.

25 Over time, the streams and ponds: Eric W. Sanderson and Marianne Brown, “Mannahatta: An Ecological First Look at the Manhattan Landscape Prior to Henry Hudson,” Northeastern Naturalist, 14, no. 4 (2007), 545.

26 Human waste filled the waterways: Ibid., 547.

27 Dead horses and cows: Benjamin Miller, Fat of the Land. Quoted in Philip Lopate, Waterfront: A Journey Around Manhattan (New York: Crown Publishers, 2004), 96–97.

28 The people who came in from the water: Burrows and Wallace, Gotham (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 322.

29 Waterfront districts earned names: Luc Sante, Low Life (New York: Farrar, Strauss, Giroux, 1991), 18.

30 “amidst the stench of the oozing”: W. O. Stoddard, “New York Harbor Police,” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine 45, no. 269 (October 1872).

31 “rising and breaking of sludge bubbles”: Joseph Mitchell, “The Bottom of the Harbor,” Up in the Old Hotel and Other Stories (New York: Vintage Books, 2008), 465.

32 “Children grow pale and languish”: “Death and Hunter’s Point,” Harper’s Weekly, August 13, 1881.

33 “the stenches began asserting themselves”: Andrew Hurley, “Creating Ecological Wastelands: Oil Pollution in New York City, 1870–1900,” Journal of Urban History 20, no. 3 (May 1994): 340.

34 the area had become an ecological wasteland: Ibid.

35 open the spigots for thousands of gallons of oil: “Fierce $1,000,000 Fire on East Tenth Street,” New York Times, November 29, 1901; “Bronx Fire Near Motor Truck Plant,” New York Times, February 10, 1919.

36 flames a hundred feet tall leapt from a gasoline barge: “Gasoline Lighter Ablaze in Hudson,” New York Times, March 5, 1916.

37 “lighted by some strange grotesque sun”: “Three Men Die in Oil Ship Fire,” New York Times, October 11, 1912.

38 new indoor plumbing efficiently piped raw waste: Wilbur N. Torpey, “Response to Pollution of New York Harbor and Thames Estuary,” Journal (Water Pollution Control Federation), 39, no. 11 (November 1967), 1797-1809.

39 Chemicals and sewage made for a toxic brew: John Waldman, “How to Make New York City Seafood Local Again,” talk at the South Street Seaport Museum, November 18, 2010.

40 People caught typhoid fever: John Waldman, Heartbeats in the Muck: The History of Sea Life and Environment of New York Harbor (New York: Lyons Press), 42.

41 “have been grumbling considerably recently”: “Mass Meeting of Fishermen Called,” New York Times, March 14, 1899.

42 The fishermen decided to propose bills: “League of Salt-Water Fishermen Meets—Central Road Accused,” New York Times, December 19, 1899.

43 “The life of the bobtail clam”: Quoted in Kevin Bone, The New York Waterfront: Evolution and Building Culture of the Port and Harbor (New York: Monacelli Press, 1997), 166.

44 “a smelly black substance”: “New York’s Polluted Waters,” New York Times, July 27, 1919.

45 “in which V is the velocity of the ascending sewage”: Report of the Metropolitan Sewerage Commission of New York: Sewerage and Sewage Disposal in the Metropolitan District of New York and New Jersey, April 30, 1910, 457.

46 “black in color from sulfide”: John Waldman, Heartbeats in the Muck: The History of Sea Life and Environment of New York Harbor (New York: Lyons Press), 86–87.

47 Fields of sewage surrounded Manhattan: Ibid.

48 Mr. Charles H. Townsend: Ibid., 481.

49 Soon, steamships and railroads routinely carried fish cargoes: Cindy R. Lobel, “Consuming Classes,” (PhD dissertation, University of New York, 2003), 69.

50 “All the fisheries in New York harbor are nearly destroyed”: Quoted in Thomas De Voe, The Market Book: Containing a Historical Account of the Public Markets in the Cities of New York, Boston, Philadelphia and Brooklyn, Etc. Google eBook, 203–4.

51 “rattling and jolting along”: Patrick Cirincione, “Impressions of Fulton Fish Market,” WPA, Feeding the City WPA Project, Municipal Archives.

52 But increasingly, even the boats: Philip Lopate, Waterfront: A Journey Around Manhattan (New York: Crown Publishers, 2004), 257.

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