A new exhibit about the Hudson River was opened
to the public in October, 2006 at the CLUI Landscape Information
Center in New York state. Up River: Points of Interest on the
Hudson from the Battery to Troy looks at the shoreline of the
Hudson River, from Battery Park, at the mouth of the river at
Manhattan, to the end of the tidal river, at the Federal Dam
in Troy.
The CLUI exhibit consists of a map of the length
of this stretch of the Hudson, with dozens of “points of interest”
along the shore, depicted in aerial photographs taken by members
of the Center over the past three years, accompanied by descriptive
text.
The Hudson River is a sculpted landscape, reflecting the collective
culture that abides along its shores. It is more than a local river,
it is a nationally superlative and progenerative place. The voice
of the Hudson is that of the nation that was cradled in the history
of this river - a nation that matured along its banks and which
has risen up mightily in the Empire State.
The distance between the Battery and Troy, 130 river miles, is
the distance separating the gates of Gotham and the hinterlands
of the State Capitol at Albany, across the river from Troy. The
edges of this river are marked with many of the achievements, outtakes,
incidents, and monuments between these poles.
It was here that American landscape painting was born, and where
our fantasies of a national Eden originated. Here too were many
of the Revolutionary War’s decisive moments. But today the literal
landmarks of the Hudson - the industries, avenues, prisons, power
plants, quarries, parks, condos, ruins, and redevelopments - possess
the most compounded and complete stories of this place.
The river still hosts a remarkable number
of rock and limestone quarries, several of which are depicted
and described in the exhibit. This quarry, the Haverstraw limestone
quarry, is invisible from the eastern shore of the river where
most of the 19th century industrialist’s mansions and romantic
landscape painters had their homes. The contour of the ridge
has been preserved.
CLUI photo
The full spectrum of the environmental movement
has played out in spaces along the Hudson, starting with the
efforts to stop quarrying along the columnar cliffs that run
along the New Jersey side of the river, north of Manhattan. The
transformation of these palisades into quarries was an affront
to the view of many wealthy people who had homes on the east
side of the Hudson. Chief among them was John D. Rockefeller,
whose country house faced the Palisades. He began to organize
other landowners and politicians to stop the quarrying, often
by buying the land himself. Eventually, the Palisades Interstate
Parks Commission, a public agency, was formed in 1900, to acquire
and manage the land on the western shore of the Hudson. The Palisades
Interstate Park system now consists of over 100,000 acres and
20 miles of Hudson shoreline.
In 1962, the dominant local utility, ConEdison, proposed building
the world’s largest pumped storage power plant on the shores
of the Hudson, at Storm King Mountain, starting an 18 year long
battle between the company and local citizens who were opposed
to the project. Opposition grew throughout the 1960’s and ‘70s,
led by local politicians and patricians, and by the Hudson’s
troubadour, Pete Seeger. They ultimately won the battle, and
the controversy led to the establishment of legal precedent and
national laws that help to put the preservation of the natural
environment before the interests of business.
Efforts to preserve the scenery of the Hudson continue, often
led by the group that was created to organize opposition to the
Storm King plant, Scenic Hudson. Scenic Hudson recently ran a
successful campaign to stop the proposed construction of one
of the nation’s largest cement plants near the city of Hudson,
on the east bank of the river.
But the river is still a major industrial corridor, an inexpensive
conveyor of bulk goods to New York City and northern New Jersey,
by far the most densely populated part of America. Once the largest
brick production area in the nation, with dozens of brick plants
lining - and transforming - the shores of the Hudson, now the industries
using the river for conveyance, storage, and production are gypsum,
aggregate, limestone, gasoline, and heating oil. A few large cement
production centers include dramatic ruins, manmade islands with
hulking silos, and networks of conveyors connecting the shore to
inland mines. A half dozen large power plants are plugged into
the Hudson - including the notorious Indian Point nuclear power
plant - delivering power to the urban centers, and using the river
to cool their boilers. Some of these plants tap into the pipelines
that bring natural gas from Canada and the Gulf of Mexico to supply
the Northeast. These lines cross under the Hudson at several points,
as does the water supply for New York City, which comes from reservoirs
over a hundred miles upstate, conveyed through the Catskill and
Delaware aqueduct systems.
As a major historic artery heading inland, the Hudson evolved
into a military river. Conversely, in recent times, the river served
as a visual highway, leading the 9/11 terrorists downstate to the
Trade Center towers. From the historic “Battery” at its mouth (now
Battery Park at the tip of Manhattan), to Nike missiles poised
on hills above Haverstraw Bay, the Hudson has hosted generations
of fortifications. Today, there are three active military sites
along the river: the National Guard training site at Camp Smith;
the Watervliet Arsenal, a military gun foundry, and West Point,
the nation’s oldest continuously operating military post, and a
looming gothic presence at one of the most dramatic parts of the
river’s topography.
The coal fired power plant at Danskammer
Point, one of several major power plants on the Hudson..
CLUI photo
West Point was built at what George Washington once
declared was the “most important strategic position in America.”
First occupied by the military in 1778, it is the location of the
Army’s most prestigious school, mandated by Thomas Jefferson in
1802. The early focus of the U.S. Military Academy was on civil
engineering, following the principles established by Napoleon and
the Ecole Polytechnic in Paris. By the time the Civil War ended,
the civil engineering conducted by the military had transferred
to the Army Corps of Engineers, and West Point started providing
a broader curriculum. West Point Military Academy’s densely developed,
neo-gothic main campus is just part of the 16,000 acre military
reservation, which includes a ski slope, an artillery range, a
natural area that cannot be visited due to unexploded ordnance,
and one of the five sites for the U.S. Mint (West Point is part
of the nation’s gold and silver bullion repository).
Though dramatic and grand, the epic of the Hudson has its subtle
and unobtrusive moments. Heading further up river, most of the
shoreline is interstitial space, unheralded, and out of focus,
punctuated by thousands of structures: homes, drainage outfalls,
boat ramps, private docks, municipal sewage treatment plants,
and the old ferry landings of small towns and cities, being converted
into public space.
Once considered the back space, with landfills and industrial
sites, and water so polluted it was dangerous, the Hudson is
now swimmable, and its urban industrial fringes are desirable
waterfront properties. As a result, much of the industrial heritage
of the Hudson is gone, giving way to condominiums, health clubs,
and remediated promenades. In a few years New Jersey’s entire
urban shoreline on the Hudson will be completely transformed
from the industrial docklands of “On the Waterfront” to a continuous
strip of condominium complexes and shopping plazas full of Bed,
Bath and Beyonds. Beyond the cities, the bike paths and jogging
trails that line the shores have the side effect of homogenizing
a fragmented and complicated mix of layered uses, and the mysteries
and histories they embody. The capped and contained industrial
soil lurks beneath the asphalt, and behind the sheet pilings,
a post-industrial burial ground.
West Point’s main campus is at one of the
narrowest points on the lower Hudson; in 1779, a large chain
was strung across the Hudson here to keep the British from traveling
upstream. This is also the deepest point on the river, 202 feet,
at a spot called World’s End.
CLUI photo
Up river, the channel narrows, until it comes to
a point at the Federal Dam, at Troy. Though water spills over the
dam, water downstream from this point is tidal: the river is an
estuary, an extension of the ocean. It takes water more than a
hundred days to get to Manhattan from here. It takes a tugboat
about 12 hours. Above this point the river is cut by lock and dams,
and linked to the network of canals – the Erie, and the Champlain
– that blend the Hudson with the waters of Montreal, Burlington,
Buffalo, Toronto, Chicago, and Duluth. Up river, the waterway that
continues to be called the Hudson, emerging from a lake in the
Adirondacks, is a different sort of river.
The first full obstruction on the Hudson
River from Manhattan is the Federal Dam. This marks the end of
the river as a tidal estuary, 150 miles from Battery Park. A
lock on the east side of the dam allows boats to continue northward,
and through a long series of locks, into the Great Lakes via
the Mohawk River and Erie Canal, and to the St. Lawrence River
in Canada, via the Champlain Canal.
CLUI photo
