When I first moved to LA from NYC to continue my scouting career, I assumed it would be the major differences that would be hardest to get used to. But in fact, it’s the elements that are sort of similar, yet VERY different, that still hit me as strange. One example: Bob Hope Patriotic Hall…
Every time I see it, I’m instantly transported back to the rows of 8-10 story historic midtown buildings I used to scout back in Manhattan, like General Society of Mechanics.
There’s just, ah, one minor difference: someone forgot the rest of the block.
As long as I live, I don’t think I’ll ever get used to seeing this building sitting by its lonesome, as though magically whisked from a crowded midtown side street to retire in the sunny climate of Southern California.
But that said, the building is gorgeous, and has been featured in countless film and television productions over the years, including as an East Coast stand-in. And honestly, walking up to the door triggers a strange deja vu that I’m always happy to feel.
Nothing like scouting a creepy abandoned property…
No power, lights out…
World is silent except for your footsteps…
Step into what was once a child’s bedroom…
THEN TWO BIRDS LEAP UP SQUAWKING CRAZILY AND FLAIL OUT THE BROKEN WINDOWS.
And another floor or two full of rooms to cover before I’m finished…
(in fact, the unexpected horror movie jump scare is one of my favorite encounters to have while scouting – just so long as I don’t wind up dead immediately after it. 😀)
Once upon a time back in my NYC days, I held a contest on April Fools asking readers to guess where I went on vacation from a series of pictures. The answer: the American Museum of History!
New Hampshire
My hope was that in having people come to the slow realization that what they’re were seeing might not be real, they’d experience these dioramas in a way that allowed them to appreciate their exquisite beauty from a new perspective.
Olympic National Forest – Washington
The AMNH is the museum I miss most since my move to LA. There was nothing like going to the museum on a slow day and wandering the dioramas alone, probably one of the most transportive experiences in NYC.
Southern Florida
To be clear, LA’s Natural History Museum is a marvel in its own right. But I think it’s the vastness of the AMNH that sets it apart in allowing visitors to truly feel the scope of the world we live in.
Yosemite Valley, California
In transferring a number of my old pictures to my website, I found a huge folder of full-size pics I’d taken for the contest, far beyond what I originally posted – so I’ve uploaded them all here for anyone who would like to see further examples of this singular art:
5) Saguaro National Monument, Arizona
Roosevelt Elkhorn Ranch, North Dakota
Lake Nipigan near Ontario, Canada
Brigantine, New Jersey
Colorado National Monument, Colorado
Stissing Mountain, New York
Grand Canyon, Arizona
Inyo National Forest, California
Sargasso Sea, Atlantic Ocean
Long Island, New York
Alaska
Gunflint Lake, Minnesota (this is my favorite diorama in the museum)
Stretching a full city block on Franklin Ave (between India and Java) is one of Brooklyn’s most interesting apartment buildings, The Astral, built in 1885/86 by industrialist/philanthropist Charles Pratt (namesake to Pratt Institute), and looking pretty much the same nearly 130 years later.
Designed in the Queen Anne style, its facade is a fascinating assortment of bays and recesses, brick and terracotta detailing, fire escapes and balconies, and just about every size and shape of window you can imagine.
Something about the Astral has always felt eerie to me. Maybe it’s all those recesses and windows – so many places for someone to be watching you from.
Or maybe it’s the enormous arched entrances, which seem more like portals than doors.
The Astral’s 125 apartments apartments are separated into six different sections, each with its own slightly different entrance design.
Even the name The Astral (“of the stars”) conjures up an air of mystery and the occult:
In fact, the name comes not from the supernatural, but from Pratt’s nearby oil refinery, known for its Astral Oil, a safer, less flammable lighter fluid (“Will not explode!” is a great brand slogan). Pratt built the Astral Apartments specifically to house his refinery workers in a safe and healthy environment, a very progressive idea in a time when thousands suffered in the squalor of tenements.
In addition to comfortable, well-ventilated apartments, Pratt also provided residents with a library/lecture hall at the India Street corner.
Here’s the first floor of that library circa 1895…
…and today, now a laundromat:
In researching the Astral, I learned that the library originally included a reading room/lecture hall in the basement, seen below circa 1900.
While the first floor space is long gone, was there any possibility the basement reading room might still exist? Last week, I headed into the bowels of the building with the super…
Sadly, the library was gutted decades ago to make way for the building’s boiler.
However, if you look behind the boiler…
…you’ll find the library’s original fireplace still in place:
See it there on the right?
The fireplace has some nice detailing…
…including this bit of advice: “Waste neither time nor money.” Also, note the building’s founding date inscribed below:
Another neat remnant from the library…
…I’m told these braces originally held a bookshelf:
Finally, you can see these two columns in the above picture:
A little bit of detailing at the top:
Pratt also provided a kindergarten for residents, seen below circa 1895:
Today, that space houses the Brooklyn Label cafe:
The interior space has been heavily renovated, though you can still see one of the original columns on the right:
For such a large building, many of the most interesting details are actually quite small. One of my favorites is impossible to make out from the street…
…but if you go up to the roof…
…you’ll see that the roof posts are capped with a really interesting – and somewhat creepy – terracotta design, alternating between two faces: screaming in horror…
…and maniacally laughing:
Of course, these most likely represent the theatrical masks of comedy and tragedy. But what an unusual addition, especially considering that you can’t see them from the ground. Sadly, most have been destroyed by lightning strikes or vandalism.
Another neat flourish – zig-zaggy rails in the rooftop fence:
There are several other neat hidden details, like the lion heads at the base of the arches…
…significantly deteriorated from age:
Flanking the main entrance…
…two odd faces wink down at passersby:
On either side of the Franklin Street facade, a really beautiful emblem…
And beneath the bay windows…
…a very pretty plant motif:
But the real beauty of The Astral is in its inventive use of recesses and bays, like this three-story arched recess:
I’m not kidding when I say this building has a lot of different window styles and sizes:
And then there are the simple patterns set set into the brickwork that accent the building:
An arch detail:
Circular windows above an entrance:
I love how the apartments get their own fire escape balcony:
Inside, things are a bit cramped as one might expect for a building meant for early 20th century refinery workers:
This is the lobby at the main entrance…
…while the side entrances open onto the stairs:
Long, thin corridors lead off of the stairwells to apartments…
…often with less than a few feet separating doors:
Many of the original floorboards remain:
Looking out one of the large arched windows from the stairwell:
Finally, I headed to the backyard…
More zig-zags on the gate:
I love the courtyard of the Astral, which feels like the archetypal New York rear apartment facade. While we’re remaking movies that clearly do not need to be remade, this would be great for Rear Window.
The courtyard is dotted with all sorts of mysteriously small, sealed doors:
Last but not least, there’s a great little alley leading back to India Street…
…with a neat little arch over the stairs:
I’ve always thought of the Astral as Greenpoint’s version of the Dakota – perhaps not as singularly iconic, but full of character nonetheless.
In Los Feliz, there’s a place called the Harvard House Motel, and I like to think that at least once in its 79-year existence, someone booked a room believing it to have some association with the university, if only in grandeur.
A while back, I was in the middle of taking scout pictures of an office building lobby when I suddenly noticed something: a security guard staring at me from his booth in the back, arms crossed, clearly not happy with what I was up to.
It happens all the time: management gives me the OK to scout but forgets to notify their lobby staff, and it always turns into a big argument til things get cleared up. Even though the guard was being passive aggressive, I know from experience it’s best to deal with it head on…
So I marched over and, without waiting for him to speak, gave the guard a full, clear explanation of exactly what I was doing and who gave me permission to do so… And he just continued to stare silently, arms crossed, skeptical. For a moment, I felt my temper rise…
Then I looked a bit closer at his face… His unblinking eyes… How still he was…
And then I saw him name tag, and it all became clear…
“Art.”
Note: this was back in 2012, and I’m not sure if ol’ Art is still on duty. But he was popular enough to merit his own NY Times write-up back in 1994!
Want to take a quick peek at the projection room in an abandoned movie theater? Come on in…
In one corner: tangles and tangles of old film from who knows how many movies:
Taped to the wall, a schedule of movie showtimes, possibly from one of the last day’s of the theater’s existence: Nuns on the Run, Crazy People, and Another 48 Hours would put this at sometime in the early 1990s. Toward the end of its existence, the theater used to do quadruple features (!!), and it’s pretty wild to think about starting this run at 11:22pm…
On a nearby shelf…
Old bottles of oil to keep the Simplex projector running:
Just outside: a closet with ancient breaker switches for the equipment:
And something I’m sure Tarantino would approve of…
A vintage doorway curtain of gold rings leading into the booth. Would love to know how many operators passed through during its near-century of operation…
Had an odd memory come to me of having once scouted an historic mansion in Long Island with palm trees lining the drive…but palm trees? Could that be right? So I dug thru my files…and there they were, at the old Woolworth Estate!
Only turns out, I’d been tricked…
These had in fact been planted for the HBO miniseries Mildred Pierce (and now appear to be gone).
Not the first nor last time I’d be fooled by my own industry…
A few weeks ago, I was using Google Maps to search for lakes north of the city. Most seemed to have your typical lake names, like Green Mountain Lake, or Harmony Lake, but one in particular caught my eye…
Does New York really have a Nuclear Lake??
Of course, the first image to pop into my head was the Nuclear Lake from The Simpsons, complete with three-eyed fish jumping about and a pipe openly dumping radioactive waste.
As it turns out, this actually isn’t all that far from the truth. In 1958, an experimental nuclear fuel research lab was set up on the shores of a lake in Pawling, NY, by Nuclear Development Associates. According to this 1955 NY Times article, the remote site was chosen because “it was the largest convenient and available tract that was not crossed by public roads and could be adequately guarded for secret experiments,” which would involve “uranium and other radioactive materials.” How reassuring!
All was apparently fissioning along just fine until the early 1970s, when two serious accidents occurred at the site. First, in 1971, a rubber stopper came off of a plutonium powder container, contaminating a lab room with radioactive material. Then, in 1972, a chemical explosion occurred in the building adjacent to the lake (pictured below in this NY Times article), causing an unknown amount of plutonium powder to spew out into the air and presumably onto the surrounding grounds. Nuclear Lake had earned its name.
Little seems to be known about the accident, though local legend has it that at least one person died, and that there was a cover-up. In the comments left to this Nuclear Lake post, one local recalls his mother, a nurse, saying that one of the victims came into the hospital with his watch melted down to his bone; another rumor has it that the ambulance he was transported in is buried on the site (you can read about a horrifying accident at a similar facility here).
A clean-up commenced at a cost of $3,000,000, and the land was deemed safe for “unrestricted use.” The company closed down the plant shortly after, and the land was sold to the National Park Service for inclusion into the Appalachian Trail. Though documents were found that suggested the company may have also been dumping radioactive waste water into the lake, a Nuclear Regulatory Commission study gave it a clean bill of health in 1994.
Of course, I had to visit Nuclear Lake for myself.
Last weekend, I drove up to Pawling with a few friends and my fluffy-butted dog Lulu. We parked at the trailhead and headed into the woods.
It didn’t take long before we began spotting the ubiquitous white blazes signifying the Appalachian Trail, painted every few trees (sadly, we didn’t see any thruhikers – perhaps it’s too early in the season?).
We continued deeper into the forest for about 20 minutes, seeing numerous squirrels, chipmunks, and woodpeckers, though surprisingly, not a single mutated turtle of either the teenage or ninja varieties.
Finally, we arrived at the Nuclear Lake loop trail, which circles around the lake to rejoin the AT on the other side.
Starting the trail, we soon came across the first remnant from the former lab: the original access road leading to the site, which appears to still be maintained. Crazy to think this was once a guarded road for a nuclear lab conducting secret research for the government.
Shortly after, we spotted a chain-link fence through the trees surrounding the former lab site.
Finally, we began to see water. We made our way through an opening in the trees…
…and arrived at the shores of the disgusting, grimy, pollution-filled Nuclear Lake.
Kidding, of course! Nuclear Lake is absolutely gorgeous, with nary a Swamp Thing or Gil-man to be found. In fact, many thruhikers on the Appalachian Trail describe it as one of the most beautiful sights on the entire trek.
But what about the former lab site? From our vantage point, we could see the area at the south side of the lake, surrounded on both sides by chain-link fences (all buildings have since been razed).
To the left, we could also see a floating barrier in the water. Any idea what the purpose of this is?
Hoping to take a look at the former lab site up close, we continued hiking around the lake, eventually rejoining the Appalachian Trail and heading back south.
Finally, we arrived at the insurmountable chain-link fence, clearly in place to prevent anyone from accidentally entering the contaminated grounds and inadvertently turning into either an Amazing Colossal Man or a 50-foot Woman, depending on your gender.
Kidding again. Actually, the fence is quite easy to get around, and seems only in place to prevent people from driving onto the former lab site.
Here is where the lab would have been…
…and if you can forget the possibility of getting a little plutonium dust in your sandwich, it really makes for a fantastic picnic location.
Here’s the picture of the abandoned lab again to give you a sense of where it was once situated:
Today, there’s no trace of the former buildings save for what appears to be a foundation off to one side (possibly remnants of the former waste disposal building?).
Stepping further back, it soon became clear that the entire area we were standing on was an artificial hill, made all the more obvious when you went down the slope on the far side. We found a hatch set into the top, and while I’d like to believe it leads to a Dharma Initiative-like room (what were the numbers again??)…
…a better guess would be that it’s an access point for the dam opening at the base of the hill:
All in all, we had a beautiful two-hour hike, there were no unwanted mutations amongst the group, and about the only suspicious thing we came across were these oversized dandelions just outside the lab site (I suppose there are worse things in the world than mutant dandelions).
If you’re looking for a fun and relatively easy hike, Nuclear Lake definitely makes a great option. Despite Google Maps’ estimate, it only took us about an hour and twenty minutes to drive up to Pawling. We did the Nuclear Loop side first, but I’d actually recommend starting with the Appalachian Trail portion, which gives you the best views of the lake and plenty of picnic spots early on. You can find more info on the hike (including where to park) here.
