Environmental History

Expanded Brooklyn Children’s Museum Reopens

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The Brooklyn Children’s Museum reopened Saturday after a year-long closure for an expansion and redesign. According to the New York Times:

The museum doubled the size of its city-owned building — with $48 million in city money and $32 million raised by the museum — to 102,000 square feet. As Robin Pogrebin reported in The Times in February, the project struggled through financial hardships. The museum itself lacked a strong physical identity, because most of its space has been underground since a 1977 design by Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer Associates created two lower levels. The greatly enlarged museum now hopes to improve its annual visitor total to 400,000 by 2010, from about 250,000 before the museum closed last September for the final stage of the renovation.

A pioneer in education, the Brooklyn Children’s Museum was the first museum created expressly for children when it was founded in 1899. Its success has sparked the creation of 300 children’s museums around the world. It is the only children’s museum in New York City, and one of few in the country, to be accredited by the American Association of Museums. The Museum encourages children to develop an understanding of and respect for themselves, others and the world around them by exploring cultures, the arts, science, and the environment.

The just-completed expansion features eco-friendly design in hopes of attaining LEED certification &#8211 it’s said to be the first &#8220green&#8221 museum in New York City. In keeping with the Museum’s commitment to preserve and protect the world’s natural resources, it uses environmentally advanced, sustainable, renewable and/or recyclable materials and systems in the building’s design and construction.

Brooklyn Children’s Museum is one of the few children’s museums in the world with a permanent collection, including nearly 30,000 cultural objects and natural-history specimens. The cultural collection contains both ancient and present-day objects, including musical instruments, sculpture, masks, body adornments, and dolls, as well as everyday household and personal items. The natural-history collection contains rocks, minerals, and fossils, as well as mounted birds, mammals, insects, and skeletons (highlights include the complete skeleton of an Asian elephant, dinosaur footprints, and a whale rib).

For years, much of the collection has been inaccessible to the public simply because of space limitations. Now, an expanded collection study area allows the Museum to display more of the collection and to offer more hands-on activities—so children learn by touching as well as by looking.

Teddy Roosevelt and The Adirondack Forest Preserve

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This post has been cross-posted to Adirondack Almanack, the blog of Adirondack culture, history, and politics.

In the heart of the Adirondacks is the Town of Newcomb, population about 500. The town was developed as a lumbering and mining community &#8211 today tourism and forest and wood products are the dominate way locals make a living. As a result the Essex County town is one of the Adirondacks’ poorer communities ($32,639 median income in 2000).

The folks in Newcomb (and also in North Creek in Warren County) often promote their communities’ connection to Theodore Roosevelt’s ascendancy to the presidency. Teddy’s nighttime trip from a camp in Newcomb to the rail station at North Creek as William McKinley lay dying from a bullet delivered by Leon Czolgosz&#8216-s .32 caliber Iver-Johnson handgun is usually considered Roosevelt’s great tie to the Adirondack region. There is a annual celebration of Roosevelt this weekend, but more of that later.

Roosevelt was the first American president to find the long-term conservation of our natural resources and important goal. According to the great wiki &#8220Roosevelt set aside more land for national parks and nature preserves than all of his predecessors combined, 194 million acres&#8221:

Roosevelt created the first National Bird Preserve, (the beginning of the Wildlife Refuge system)&#8230- recognized the imminent extinction of the American Bison&#8230- urged Congress to establish the United States Forest Service (1905), to manage government forest lands, and he appointed Gifford Pinchot to head the service&#8230- In all, by 1909, the Roosevelt administration had created an unprecedented 42 million acres (170,000 km?) of national forests, 53 national wildlife refuges and 18 areas of &#8220special interest&#8221, including the Grand Canyon.

A longstanding question from Roosevelt’s time still creates raging debates in Newcomb &#8211 should the state keep buying land in Newcomb (and elsewhere) to add to the Forest Preserve while it continues to ban logging?

Here is a short history of the movement to log the Adirondack Forest Preserve prior to 1900:

1798 &#8211 New York State sells 4 million acres of the Macomb Patent for eight pence an acre. Political and corporate interests would control much of the Adirondacks for the next century. In 1855 for example, the state sold three entire townships to a railroad company for five cents an acre, even though the price had been set by law at 75 cents an acre.

In 1885, the Forest Preserve Act was passed establishing the New York State Forest Commission and declaring that &#8220The lands now or hereafter constituting the forest preserve shall be forever kept as wild forest lands. They shall not sold, nor shall they be leased or taken by any corporation, public or private.&#8221

With the establishment of the Forest Preserve came calls to log it. In 1890, the Commission argued that new Forest Preserve lands should be purchased with money from the sales of timber (softwoods over 12 inches in diameter). In 1892, the state legislature established the Adirondack Park within the Forest Preserve and stated it would be &#8220forever reserved, maintained and cared for as a ground open for the free use of all the people for their health or pleasure, and as forest lands necessary to the preservation of the headwaters of the chief rivers and a future timber supply.&#8221

The following year later the State Legislature approved the logging of Tamarack and Spruce 12 inches and up and any size Poplar. The New York Evening Post reported that fifteen bills were rushed to the New York Legislature &#8220nearly all of which are directly to the advantage of the timber and land sharks.&#8221 The following year, the American Forestry Association, the New York State Forestry Association, the Adirondack Park Association, and the Genesee Forestry Association, held a &#8220Forest Congress&#8221 in Albany which opposed the lumbering plan.

The move to log the Forest Preserve created a backlash from conservationists and that, along with a report form the State Comptroller outlining immense fraud, bribery, and illegal cutting, led to inclusion of a formal ban in the New York Constitution in 1894. &#8220The lands of the state, now owned or hereafter acquired, constituting the forest preserve as now fixed by law, shall be forever kept as wild forest lands. They shall not be leased, sold or exchanged, or be taken by any corporation, public or private, nor shall the timber thereon be sold, removed or destroyed.&#8221 The American Forestry Association also opposed this plan.

In 1898, New York Governor Frank Black, pushed for a 40,000 acre experimental forestry station to be run by Cornell Forest School, which was established by the same law. Cornell University started the forestry program but closed its doors in 1903, it was headed by Bernhard Eduard Fernow.

In 1898 Teddy Roosevelt was elected Governor. Roosevelt believed that someday, forestry could be applied to the state’s Forest Preserve &#8211 he said so in his 1900 annual message: &#8220We need to have our system of forestry gradually developed and conducted along scientific principles. When this has been done it will be possible to allow marketable lumber to be cut everywhere without damage to the forests.&#8221

Roosevelt brought in Gifford Pinchot and the United States Division of Forestry who devised a plan to lumber Township 40 in the Totten and Crossfield Purchase. About 25 men were hired under forester Ralph Hosmer and local lumberer Eugene Bruce to survey the woods and lay out a plan to log the Forest Preserve. With the failure of the plan’s adoption came the virtual end to serious attempts to log the Adirondacks en masse.

The annual Newcomb Roosevelt celebration is this weekend (Sept. 5, 6, and 7)

Newcomb Visitor Interpretive Center Opening Celebration (Friday night, Sept. 5, at 6:30 p.m., and featuring Adirondack Folksinger-Songwriter Peggy Lynn)

Craft Fair (Saturday, Sept. 6, 10 a.m. – 4 p.m. and Sunday, Sept. 7, 10 a.m. – 3 p.m. at the Newcomb Central School)

Quilt Show (Saturday and Sunday, Sept. 6-7, 9 a.m. &#8211 5 p.m. at the Newcomb Visitor Interpretive Center).

All Weekend Long: Wagon Rides to Camp Santanoni, Free Pony Rides, Wool Spinning, a Classic Car Exhibit, Historic Guided Tours of Newcomb and Village of Adirondac, the Ty Yandon 5K Memorial Foot Race, and the TR Naturalist Challenge.

Fireworks on Saturday evening, Sept. 6, at the Overlook (Musical Entertainment beforehand)

For more information, contact the Newcomb Chamber of Commerce at (518) 582-3211.

1800s Natural History Survey of New York Online

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The mid-1800s Natural History Survey of New York has been posted online at the New York State Library here. According to a recent note from the Library’s staff:

The Natural History Survey of New York, undertaken in the mid-1800s, covered zoology, flora, mineralogy, geology, agriculture and paleontology. The NYS Library has digitized the first three components of the survey so far. The &#8220Zoology of New York&#8221, or the &#8220New York Fauna,&#8221 is a five-volume set published from 1842-1844. This pioneering study by James E. De Kay addressed both recent and fossil mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish, mollusks and crustaceans. The hand-colored plates in part 1 (Mammalia), part 2 (Birds) and part 5 (Mollusca and Crustacea) can be found at the end of those volumes. &#8220A Flora of the State of New-York,&#8221 a two-volume set by John Torrey, was published in 1843- at the time, it was the largest single work of its kind published. The hand-colored plates are listed after each volume. &#8220Mineralogy of New-York&#8221 by Lewis C. Beck was published in 1842 and provided detailed descriptions of minerals found in the state, with information on their uses in the arts and agriculture.

Here is a description of the Northern District from the Survey’s preface (note the presence of wolverines [photo above] &#8211 alternate spellings are in the original):

The Northern District comprises, as its name imports, the northern portion of the State, which forms an irregular truncated triangle, bounded on its western side by Lake Ontario and the River St. Lawrence, on its eastern side by Lake Champlain and Lake George, and lying north of the Mohawk valley. This district, in its southern and southeastern portions, rises into numerous conical peaks and short ranges, attaining in some places an elevation of more than five thousand feet. Towards Lakes Champlain and George, these subside suddenly to the level of those sheets of water. To the north and northwest, this descends by a gradual and almost imperceptible slope towards the River St. Lawrence. This slope is watered by the Oswegatchie, the Moose and Black rivers, the Raquet [sic] and Grass and St. Regis rivers, all arising from numerous lakes embosomed in the mountainous regions of its southern parts. Lake Champlain, a part of its eastern boundary, extends north and south one hundred and forty miles, is twelve miles wide in its broadest part, and discharges its water through the Sorel river into the St. Lawrence. Into the southern part of this lake is also poured the waters of Lake George or Horicon, thirty-seven miles long, and varying from one to seven miles in breadth. The cluster of mountains in its southeastern portions may be considered as an offset from the great Appalachian system, which, descending through the States of Maine, New-Hampshire and Vermont, passes southwesterly between the Western and Hudson river districts, and is continued under the name of the Allegany range of mountains. In this region too we find the Sacondaga, Cedar, Jessup, and other tributaries of the Hudson, within a short distance of those which pour into the St. Lawrence. This mountainous region comprises the counties of Essex, Hamilton, Herkimer and Warren, and the southern part of the counties of Clinton, Franklin and St. Lawrence, and has been estimated to contain an area of about six thousand square miles. Its zoological character is strongly impressed by the features just alluded to. The chief growth of trees in this district are the Spruce, Pine, Larch, Balsam, Fir and Cedar. We find in this district many of the fur-bearing animals, such as the Sable, the Fisher, and the Beaver. Here too roam the Moose, the Wolverine, and others now only found in high northern latitudes. It also forms the southern limits of the migration of many arctic birds- and we accordingly meet here with the Canada Jay and Spruce Grouse, the Swan, the Raven and the Arctic Woodpecker.

NY Oysters: Urban History and The Environment

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I just finished reading Mark Kurlansky’s The Big Oyster: History on the Half Shell. It’s basically a short history of New York City told through the city’s natural environment and one of its most significant natural resources (possibly second only to its natural harbor) &#8211 the oyster.

I’ve also read, and can highly recommend, three of Kurlansky’s previous books.

Cod: A Biography of The Fish The Changed the World

The Basque History of the World

Salt A World History

All have implications for New York History &#8211 according to esteemed Iroquoisian Dean Snow, the word Iroquois is derived from a Basque word, a demonstration of their subtle impact in our region during their search for Cod off the Grand Banks, Cod they then salted to preserve. Throughout all three books Kurlansky includes historic recipes and other culinary history.

The Big Oyster is a must read for those interested in natural history, marine history, the Atlantic World, and food history as well as those with a taste for urban history and the New York City underworld of oyster cellars, cartmen, and seedy public spaces of all kinds.

Erik Baard of the blog Nature Calendar:Your Urban Wilderness Community posted an interesting interview with Kurlansky last week, and also points us to the upcoming Spring/Summer 2008 Oyster Gardening Event:

This program, in collaboration with NY/NJ Baykeeper and the New York Harbor School, seeks to increase stewardship among residents of the New York-New Jersey Harbor Estuary by working with volunteers from schools and community organizations in New York City to help prepare an oyster reef off the Tribeca waterfront. The project builds on the results of NY/NJ Baykeeper oyster reef restoration in New Jersey and research conducted by The River Project at its Pier 26 field station in New York.

A taste of the interview with Kurlansky:

Erik Baard: The Dutch and British settlers used that shell lime to construct stone homes. And I’m kind of curious about the many ways oysters were used. It’s a very versatile product, the meat, the shell being used for construction of buildings… How else were they used?

Mark Kurlansky: They were used in roads, you know, paving roads and in landfill. They were use to fertilize soil, to increase the lime content of the soil, which used to be called “sweetening the soil.” You could just plow oysters under. In fact, Europeans who visited were surprised to see that. The European way was always to grind it up and create this lime powder that you use as fertilizer, but New York farmers used to just take whole shells and put them in the earth.

Erik Baard: And this would lower the acidity?

Mark Kurlansky: Right. Okay.

Erik Baard: Now also, Pearl Street, you clarified some mythologies on that.

Mark Kurlansky: Yes, for some reason there’s a lot of mythologies about Pearl Street. I was just on Pearl Street last Saturday, I was thinking about this. Pearl Street was the waterfront in Dutch times, in the original Manhattan. It continues now several blocks further because of landfill. And there’s lots of stories about why it was called Pearl Street. But the real reason seems to be that on the waters edge there, the Indians had left large piles of shells.

Erik Baard: It wasn’t paved with the oyster shells?

Mark Kurlansky: No you often hear that but, one of the first things I noticed when I was researching this book was that the street got its name before it was paved