BROOKLYN'S PASSAGE OF ACHERON

There is a secret tunnel they say, the tomb of a dead railroad car flipped over on its side like an iron whale and buried beneath Brooklyn's Atlantic Avenue since 1861. Since then it has been the source of a flurry of folklore stories, hauntings, legends, and lurid secrets.

Some say Civil War spies buried the mysteriously missing pages of John Wilkes Booth's diary down there in a brass box. Others claim the tunnel holds weaponry from the notorious Smoky Hollow gang, bootlegging treasures, clues of 19th century espionage, and plenty more.

In 1861, Walt Whitman wrote a column in the Brooklyn Standard where he describes "the old tunnel, that used to lie there underground, a passage of Acheron like solemnity and darkness, now all closed up and filled up, and soon to be utterly forgotten, with all its reminiscences..."

The tunnel was rediscovered in 1981 by engineering student-turned-Brooklyn's own Indiana Jones, Bob Diamond. Diamond spent years in search of the tunnel and its supposed secrets. After scouring ancient engineering documents, obtaining city permissions, and crawling on his belly through 100ft of Brooklyn soot he was finally rewarded when he was poked through a hastily constructed brick and cobble wall and felt a blast of cold air rushing out from the 120 year old cave.

Currently there is a documentary is in the works exploring his great find and this amazing story. This trailer is pretty good insight to the story...


The tunnel was originally commissioned by Cornelius Vanderbilt's LIRR in 1844 when the nuisance of train-related pedestrian bloodshed was gumming up his all important train schedules. A small army of Irish workers did the digging, known later as sandhogs, using the cut and cover method and in truth, it became New York's very first subway.

By the 1850's the tunnels usefulness was waning so a contractor named Electus Lichtfield was hired to fill in the tunnel once and for all, but these being the glory days of New York construction corruption, graft and all around corner-cutting, Lichtfield does not such thing. Instead, in the interest of making a grand ole' profit, he walls in the tunnel on both ends, covers up the other entrances with cartloads of brick and dirt, and get some his "friends" at City Hall to confirm that the tunnel was gone forever...

Bob Diamond's incredible story of rediscovering the tunnel eventually uncovers Lichtfield's scam but his great con turned out to leave something of a legacy for New Yorkers in search of a little intrigue. Still, there are two areas of the tunnel that have not been opened up and Bob Diamond believes that Booth's diary and other lurid artifacts may still be entombed there. Diamond is now the official curator of this great piece of NYC archeology and occasionally runs tours of the defunct tunnel that Whitman called "dark as the grave, cold, damp, and silent."

There is a great collection of in-depth tunnel-related articles here: http://www.brooklynrail.net/proj_aatunnel.html

You can also read the story at Curious Expeditions: http://curiousexpeditions.org/?cat=35

~MB

CHASE- MANHATTAN - BURR?

Have you ever found yourself half-drunk and impatiently waiting for your cash to spew out of an ATM and wondered about this wacky little symbol here?? It's okay... Mulberry Bend has.


This story begins in 1799 amidst the bitter rivalry of Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr. Following a cholera outbreak in the then fledgling New York City, Burr won a crucial contract to drain fresh water ponds on Manhattan Island in order to supply fresh water to its inhabitants. This led him to found the Manhattan Company.


Hamilton had established the first corporate bank in New York, Bank of New York, in 1784 and enjoyed many years of fat profits without any competition. This irked Burr so much that he insisted that his newly established Manhattan Company obtain a clause in its charter that would allow it to become a bank, adding another layer to their fierce rivalry ... and we all know how that ended.

A. Burr - one hell of a model American !

Burr laid pipe all over Manhattan... literally. Always the cost-cutter, he hollowed out pine logs to carry the water to where it needed to go. Ultimately, Burr did a terrible job draining the water from Manhattan which led to awful public health and structural problems down the line but that's a different story. Have a look at his handy work:

See where this is headed?? Over the centuries the Manhattan Bank went thru several mergers and in 1930 John D. Rockefeller Jr. threw his hat in the ring and the bank became the largest in the nation. In the 1960's the bank decided that they needed a graphic logo - pretty revolutionary at the time - so they hired Chermayeff & Geismar Associates to whip something up.

They wanted something that would suggest security, organization, protection, equality, etc. but the designers also thought that they could make their clients happy by taking note of the venerated history of the bank which dated back to 1799. So they used Burr's old pine logs as the inspiration for the abstract image that would go on to become one of the most genre-defining corporate logos of the age.

To this day workers will occasionally unearth hollow pine logs during excavations like this one at Coenties Slip. It seems as though the ubiquity of the Burr's pine logs translates nicely to the evil corporate omnipresence of Chase logos in our fair city today.

Oh Burr, you always get the last laugh!

Weird...

~MB

HISTORY "CAPTURED"

Last night MB witnessed an enthusiastic screening of the new documentary film, "Captured" in an event space on the Bowery. The film chronicles the life work of LES artist and consummate man-of-many-hats, Clayton Patterson, who tirelessly etched scenes of pre-gentrified Lower-East-Side life into a vast compendium of photos, films, and art for over 30 years. Like a modern day Herodotus, Patterson labored, often risking life and limb, so that us future generations and revelers of the L.E.S. could witness the blood that was spilled on this ground before our time.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxUZSIf5yjQ


Clayton is victorious as a Lower East Side hero and the film does a good job of picking through his vast collection of divisive if not outright disturbing video footage, but the PBR guzzling audience seemed to walk away unaffected by the woes of lower-east-siders of the last generation. At one point rioters raid the lobby of a upscale apartment building on Tompkins square -a mere neanderthal to today's Avalon or Ludlow monstrosities - in a gesture of angst toward upscale gentrification, but how does one expect the current inhabitants to react to this? As you might expect, the tragedy felt by the LES dwellers of the 70's & 80's was lost on more than a few.

The precious footage that Clayton has rescued from anonymity however, is CAPTURED's greatest gift. The LES as ghetto; a lawless, shameless, bubbling miasma of crime, art, newness, fear, and infamy. MB has often wondered what New York might have looked like during the 1863 Draft Riots and the tapes of the Tompkins Square Riot might be just about as clear a window as we can get into what happens when peace in our city takes a holiday.

THE BOWERY NOUVEAU

First off, kudos to the Bowery Hotel and its creators Sean MacPherson & Eric Goode for creating a truly exquisite vision of the Bowery 'gone Continental. We have always believed the Bowery to be a distinct calling card of New York City appropriate for out-of-towners or visitors from abroad. Much like New York, it is an entity onto itself having a colored history that is commonly set apart from the development of the rest of the city. It has always been boldy unashamed of what it is, for better or for worse.

During the 19th century the Bowery was the shadowy low-brow theatre district; birthplace of the American minstrel shows (the first form of American popular music); tap-dancing, the New York dialect, and later epicenter to the vaudeville theatre era. The Bowery was a constant thoroughfare of the carnivalesque; it may have appeared dark & dismal but it was a place that was alive with deeply American inventions and cultural fermentation.


The creators of the Bowery Hotel have taken this "aesthetic idea" of the Bowery as dark & cozy, mysterious, cave-like, ragged and well-worn, and married it to a vision of almost European grandeur. Granted, the interior of the hotel is probably far more elegant than anything that ever lived on the Bowery, but we can appreciate a tasteful appropriation of style when we see it. All the tapestries are tattered like ancient Medieval art, the furniture shows bruises and homely dings & tears in non-obstrusive places, in one hallway there is a glass showcase of Barnum-esque oddities, and surrounding the lobby is a smoky, painted panorama of a river-scape opposing the dusty streets of the old Bowery. Everywhere this dude is speckled:





Bowery B'hoyo

He is their logo & leprechaun and he is friend to Barking Irons. We know the Bowery is in transition and that's all well and good, but first, a tip of our hat to the Bowery Hotel for honoring a legacy in pursuit of new riches.

In contrast to this tasteful homage to the history that is the Bowery Hotel there is the newly constructed New Museum on Bowery, which, along with the new Whole Foods ushers in a new era of Bowery development that breaks unabashedly with the shadowy past of our humble thoroughfare and its lowly fore-bearers.



The "New Museum" on Bowery

Now, I am not one of those who is staunchly opposed to the rising tide of development or one to lament the passing of old, decrepit buildings -this destruction/creation process is part of the life blood of New York, if it did not exist it would truly be something to lament- but these fancy pants architects need to call a spade a spade. This is an excerpt from a recent interview:

Question: How does your design address the context of the Bowery—the thoroughfare itself, the beginning of Prince Street at the site, the surrounding of smallish buildings of different styles and conditions?

Answer: We wanted to be as consistent as possible with the scale of the existing surroundings. However, our building has to accommodate a much bigger program than its neighbors do. By shifting the different levels of the structure in relation to one another, we are also diminishing the bulk and establishing a more effective, dynamic relationship with the buildings in the area. On the other hand, because this area is in transition, we believe the New Museum building should have a strong identity of its own in order to survive, especially on a street as tough as the Bowery.

If this isn't blowing theoretical smoke up our asses, I don't know what is. Your building is by no stretch of the imagination at harmony or in context with its surroundings, it sticks out like a sore thumb and that's exactly what you wanted it to do. And what does "diminishing the bulk" even supposed to mean?? Does it mean diminishing the crappiness?? If so, well done. But we're not so bitter, we know that its par for the course and thats how come your pants got so fancy, so welcome to the Bowery... I guess.

SUNSHINE & SHADOW

It is difficult for a gentleman to be discerning nowadays. Smaller independent brands are either destined to a shadowy existence or
or getting snuffed out after a few short seasons. With retail in a slump customers and retailers alike are reluctant to take chances on independent brands and instead gravitate towards bigger, more established labels. Only a few years back this wasn't so, there was an opening in the market for independent brands, people wanted original and subversive, something off-the-beaten-track and provocative.

Everybody knows the economy is in a spin. It is not at all surprising to learn that this opening has since slammed shut and the trend has swung back the other way in light of the circumstances. Everybody is being more cautious especially when it comes to fashion; but does this economic turn inevitably put the subversive consumer on hiatus? Does the falling dollar set the scene for a few years of sure-footed conformity in the fashion world?
Whatever be the outcome, The Good Ship Barking Irons along with a slew of other independents are sailing on in an ever-more brazen direction, through the shadows toward an eventual sunrise.

It is a classic business tale of David & Goliath: we have to rely on getting scrappy and staying lean in order to hold out in this fight. There are several factors working against us, but being a nimble brand is our greatest strength if we can hang in there long enough. The armchair economists predict that the economy will bounce back again, maybe so, but I glean from the experts that we may not have hit the bottom yet. Until then, we here on the Bowery are going to keep our candles burning...

New Fall Collection In Stores; available at Bloomingdales & Nordstroms as well as other specialty retailers

GET DOWN, OLD HAGUE!

For our Fall 2007 season I was being dragged into this "ghostly" theme by my research. Originally it wasn’t a conscious idea, it was more a theme that I kept running into accidentally. I became aware of it after prints started looking diffused rather than sharp. This diffusion was more or less a defense against knock offs. With all the iconography cropping up in prints now-a-days, I was trying to get a distinct technique that would separate Barking Irons from the recent flare of antique prints. Most of it is done with my pencil, but some of it is a result of older print shop methods and halftones in some of our out of print books.

The Daniel Divver print is not an example of this diffusion, but it is an example of how the now conscious theme of ghosts has become a part of the Fall 2007 collection.

Daniel Divver was born in Ireland in 1839. Soon after he came to New York and lived in the city's 4th Ward (Lower East Side closest to the East River). Divver, like all youth, had a fascination with being a volunteer fireman. When he became of age he joined the Eagle Engine Company No. 13 and proved his worth as one of the ladder's best men. As soon as the Civil War broke out, Daniel Divver joined the First Fire Zouaves and was elected Second Lieutenant. In 1861 during the battle of Bull Run, Divver's company met with a rally of Rebels.



Outnumbered and too proud to turn tail, Divver is reported to have rolled up he sleeves and yelled his old engine company's familiar "Get Down, Old Hague!" before rushing forward to his death. The Zouaves eventually pushed the Rebel force back enough to find Divver's body before his final breath. They said their goodbyes but could not move him as the South made another sally and Daniel Divver was never seen again. Until now. . .