A Short Trip to a Sewage Plant

I have wanted to go for a walk in New York's Greenpoint neighborhood for a long time.   Green point is known as the center of New York's Polish community.   Sure enough, as soon as I emerged from the G train (immortalized in Mingus's tune) stop, there were signs in Polish, and little shops piled high with every form of sausage you can think of.    Greenpoint is isolated in some ways, and although gentrification is certainly under way, it has nowhere near the hipster cachet of other gentrifying Brooklyn neighborhoods.  It has a historic district, and it also has a lot of old housing which has been updated with what the AIA guide calls "Archie Bunker" improvements.   And, as yet, its waterfront is not overcome with high-rise condos.

Part of a local church:

A house:

An old bank building:

Not everyone is Polish:

Old warehouses:

Some of the architecture is less distinguished:

The waterfront in Greenpoint is still undeveloped:

The other thing to see in Greenpoint is the Newtown Creek sewage plant, a massive new sewage treatment plant designed by the Polshak architectural firm.  It is quite a stunning building.   It borders on Newtown Creek, which is one of the most polluted waterways in the country and is a EPA Superfund site.    The whole area has been devastated by industrial pollution, dating back to oil refineries in the 19th century.   The designers of the sewage plant, though, even managed to include a "nature walk" which borders the sewage plant and runs along Newtown Creek.  Only in New York could you have a nature walk which has a sewage plant on one side and an EPA Superfund site on the other other side. But it is beautifully done, with a relatively narrow, planted path along the water.   Needless to say, there were only two other people there the whole time I was there; it was peaceful and quiet.

The sewage plant:

The nature walk begins like this:

The path along the water, bordering on "Whale Creek".   No whales to be seen...

Views across Newtown Creek from the nature walk:

The area around the sewage plant is industrial, with a lot of metal scrapyards and the occasional movie making facility.

I am always looking for color and geometry.

Mondrian lives in Brooklyn (actually, he is buried in Brooklyn).