The New York Times Book of New York

by The New York Times

  Investigation Begins Into Ferry Crash That Killed 10

  By JANNY SCOTT | October 16, 2003

  A STATEN ISLAND FERRY MOVING AT A RAPID clip in gusting winds crashed into a pier at the St. George ferry terminal, killing 10 people and injuring dozens of others as the concrete and wood pier sliced through its side, mowing down tourists and commuters.

  The exact cause of the 3:20 p.m. accident was not clear. Law enforcement officials said the ferry’s pilot fled the scene to his home in the Westerleigh neighborhood of Staten Island, barricaded himself in a bathroom, slit his wrists and shot himself twice in the chest with a powerful pellet gun.

  The pilot, identified by city officials as Assistant Capt. Richard J. Smith, survived and was in critical condition at a local hospital, where detectives were waiting to interview him. Mr. Smith was in charge of the boat when it neared the Staten Island terminal at a high speed, and his captain noticed that the ferry was off course, according to one police official. The captain tried to get control of the boat, the official said, but it slammed into a concrete maintenance pier about 400 feet from the nearest ferry slip.

  Investigators were trying to determine last night whether Mr. Smith had been drinking or taking drugs, had fallen asleep or was perhaps incapacitated as a result of a medical condition, a law enforcement official said.

  Passengers compared what ensued to a scene from “Titanic.” They said there was an ominous grinding sound followed by a bang, like an explosion. Then the pier, like an iceberg, sheared into the side of the main deck, tearing it open. With no announcements or instructions by the boat’s crew, passengers began fleeing in confusion and panic.

  “The beams are coming directly at you, and the side of the boat is disappearing,” said Robert Carroll, a lawyer for the state court system, who was on board. “They’re ripping up steel, glass, chairs. People were falling. At one point I was in a pile, and I just got up and kept running. It kept coming and coming. If you didn’t keep running, you were dead.”

  Fifty Years, Five Cents: The Staten Island Ferry Has a Birthday

  By McCANDLISH PHILLIPS | October 23, 1955

  The ferry, shown here transporting morning commuters to Manhattan terminal, services 65,000 riders a day.

  THE STATEN ISLAND-MANHATTAN FERRY, whose charge it is to connect the North American continent to Staten Island, is going to take a satisfied look at its 50-year history this week and congratulate itself on having come so far and done so well.

  The 50th anniversary of the city-owned service will be celebrated with (a) wisps of white smoke, or (b) billows of black smoke or (c) a light, almost invisible haze, depending upon the art with which the stokers below decks compound the oil and the air that are the elements of their fuel formula.

  A reporter recently undertaking his maiden voyage on the ferry was led to the Kolff, a vessel 269.5 feet long and 69 feet wide built in 1951 at a cost of $7 million. Its passenger capacity, 2,954, is about as great as that of the Queen Mary, and the Kolff usually makes the five-and-a-half-mile run between the Battery and Staten Island in 22 minutes at an average speed of about 14 knots. Tide, traffic and weather affect the time of the trip and a dense fog will occasionally extend it to 50 minutes. Forty-four passenger vehicles can fit into the Kolff’s three-lane, street-level craw.

  The Staten Island Ferry (everybody speaks of it as if there were but one, though in fact there are 10) is essentially a seaworthy streetcar. Passengers sit on trolley-like benches, facing one another in long rows and encountering difficulty in finding something sensible to do with their eyes.

  One of the best ways not to demonstrate that you are in the nautical know is to go about referring to Staten Island ferries as ships. They are not ships; they are boats. You may call them vessels if you wish, but to speak of them as ships is to betray a schooling that has been largely acquired ashore. (In the Navy, any boat that is large enough to carry another boat on it or in it is called a ship. And if you go around calling it a boat, you are likely to find yourself furnishing regular assistance to the boys in the galley. The ways of the sea are mysterious.)

  325,000 See Mayor Dedicate Airport to World Service

  October 16, 1939

  Mayor LaGuardia presides over ground-breaking ceremonies for the new airport. It was voted “greatest airport in the world” in 1960 by the worldwide aviation community.

  THE WORLD’S POTENTIALLY GREATEST AIR terminal, the newly completed municipal airport at North Beach, built on the accumulated refuse of the city, was dedicated yesterday by Mayor La Guardia before 325,000 persons under the most auspicious circumstances of wind and weather.

  Conceived in 1935, when the Post Office Department declined to accept Floyd Bennett Airport in Brooklyn as the air terminus for the city, it was begun in September 1937 and rushed to completion by the Works Projects Administration in a little over two years at a cost of $40 million to $45 million. It thus became W.P.A.’s biggest project.

  Already approved by most of the major airlines, which have rented hangar space, and unqualifiedly accepted by the pilots as the safest in the United States, the field awaits only official acceptance by the Civil Aeronautical Authority to begin operation as a transcontinental and transatlantic terminus.

  If any proof was needed of its worthiness of designation as the world’s greatest airport, the 150 planes that landed and took off yesterday with only one minor mishap must have supplied it. Army and navy pilots who saw it for the first time said it was as fine a field as ever they had used.

  Conceived in 1935, it was begun in September 1937 and rushed to completion by the Works Projects Administration in a little over two years at a cost of $40 million to $45 million.

  There was not a cloud in the sky and a northwest breeze of only 18 miles an hour was blowing as the airplanes and the vanguard of the crowd began to arrive at 9 a.m. Two thousand policemen, under the personal direction of Commissioner Lewis Valentine and Chief Inspector Louis F. Costuma, were on hand to keep them moving and out of harm’s way. The mayor, who was so happy that he said he could even find it in his heart to forgive all those who had criticized the undertaking, arrived before noon so he would not miss any of the fun.

  To Pilots, Shea Is Less Ballpark Than Landmark

  By MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT | September 26, 2008

  FOR 44 YEARS, THE PROCESSION OF PLANES from nearby La Guardia Airport has contributed to an unusual ballpark soundtrack at Shea Stadium, the roar of jet engines a thousand feet above the crack of the bats and the cries of the hot dog vendors.

  With the stadium about to shut its gates for the final time, the spectators who can claim perhaps the most peculiar relationship with the ballpark may be airline pilots who, with a bird’s-eye peek at the field through cockpit windows, have participated in that uncommon convergence of baseball and aviation.

  “You are so low and close you can see it and almost smell it,” said Glen Millen, who estimates that he has flown into and out of La Guardia 1,800 times since he began flying for American Airlines in 1986.

  La Guardia is one of the few airports in the country where pilots use land markers instead of instruments to guide their landings. Shea Stadium, which from the sky looks like a blue circle with a green center, is a primary runway guidepost. For one of the more common landing routes, pilots are instructed to follow the Long Island Expressway until they arrive at the eastern side of the stadium, at which point they bank the plane left around the outfield wall and head straight for Runway 31.

  “We make a sweeping turn around Shea Stadium to land, and you bank the airplane and out of the corner of your eye you can see the scoreboard and the players,” said Joe Romanko, a pilot with American Airlines since 1990. “It’s more dramatic at night because you track the lights on the stadium from way out.”

  La Guardia is one of the few airports in the country where pilots use land markers instead of instruments to guide their landings.

  In 1964, the Mets’ first season at Shea, a pilot got an even closer look.
He mistook the lights on top of the stadium for the runway and nearly hit it as the team took batting practice before a game against the St. Louis Cardinals.

  Mayor La Guardia Won’t Land In Newark

  November 25, 1934

  NEWARK, WHICH TRIED TO TAKE AWAY NEW York’s Stock Exchange and now is making faces at the metropolis across the river because New York is taking traffic from its airport, was shunned by Mayor La Guardia on his return from Chicago by airplane last night.

  Unlike other passengers, the mayor remained in the TWA plane on its arrival at the Newark Municipal Airport. While several of the others went by automobile to Manhattan, the mayor traveled in the plane to New York’s municipal airport at Floyd Bennett Field. Mr. La Guardia, who had attended the conference of mayors in Chicago, was greeted at the flying field by his wife, who was accompanied by his secretary, Lester Stone.

  On alighting, the mayor confirmed reports that he had refused to be deposited at Newark. “My ticket says New York,” he said, “and that’s where they brought me.”

  Idlewild Is Rededicated As John F. Kennedy Airport

  By PHILIP BENJAMIN | December 25, 1963

  The JetBlue Flight Center officially opened on October 22, 2008.

  SHORTLY AFTER NOON YESTERDAY, THE PILOT of a transcontinental airliner flicked a switch and announced to his passengers, “Ladies and gentlemen, we will be arriving shortly at Kennedy International Airport.” A half hour earlier New York International Airport at Idlewild, Queens, had been formally renamed John F. Kennedy International Airport.

  Just before that, in a ceremony at the International Arrivals Building, Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, brother of the president, unveiled three letters—J.F.K.—that will form part of a sign 242 feet long and 8 feet high.

  “The name is already assured of remembrance in the chronicles of these times and of all times,” Mayor Wagner told the assemblage. “Thus we do not pretend to add to the name’s luster by adopting it for even this great crossroads of the world’s skyway.”

  Airline Terminal For the Post-9/11 Era

  By DAVID W. DUNLAP | March 11, 2008

  FROM THE MOMENT THE FIRST PASSENGERS arrive at JetBlue Airways’ new, $750 million terminal at Kennedy International Airport, they will face an unmistakably post-9/11 world.

  Most airline terminals have been jury-rigged since 2001 to accommodate all the extra security workers and equipment. But JetBlue’s new Terminal 5 is among the first in the United States designed from the ground up after the terrorist attacks.

  The 340-foot-wide security checkpoint will dominate the departures hall the way ticket counters once did, with 20 security lanes. Travelers will find a lot of benches where they can pull themselves back together after running the security gantlet. There will be subtler touches, too: a resilient rubber Tuflex floor (instead of cold, hard terrazzo) for the areas where one has to go shoeless.

  “We want the security process to be thoroughly rigorous but minimally intrusive,” said William R. DeCota, director of aviation at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which runs Kennedy. “The design of that terminal was intended to make sure that no one will have to worry that their wait time is going to be greater than 10 minutes.”

  The new terminal has been overshadowed by that abandoned embodiment of the “Come Fly With Me” era of jet-setting, the Trans World Airlines Flight Center, designed by Eero Saarinen and also known as Terminal 5. JetBlue passengers will be able to pass through it on their way to the new Terminal 5.

  Century After Wright Brothers, A Computer-run Train to J.F.K.

  By MICHAEL LUO and STACY ALBIN | December 18, 2003

  Construction of the AirTrain system began in 1998, but was delayed by the derailment of a test train on September 27, 2002, which killed 23-year-old operator Kelvin DeBourgh, Jr.

  A HUNDRED YEARS TO THE DAY AFTER THE Wright brothers first flew, nearly 60 years after Robert Moses dismissed an early version of the idea, 40 years after Idlewild Airport became Kennedy, and 34 years after man landed on the moon, New York City got its long-awaited train-to-the-plane link yesterday.

  Sort of.

  Before a phalanx of cameras, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Gov. George E. Pataki stepped off the AirTrain into the gleaming new terminal in Jamaica, a few hours before it opened to the public. But the carefully choreographed moment was marred when the new train’s stainless steel doors closed too quickly on Mr. Bloomberg, causing him to stagger. He was caught by Mr. Pataki.

  Righting himself, Mr. Bloomberg pronounced: “The ride was great.”

  Last night, the train experienced other problems, when an electrical malfunction halted service for about 20 minutes. The hiccups were in many ways symbolic of this project, which has been studied more than a dozen times over the decades. Transit advocates and politicians have long sought a “one-seat ride” directly from Manhattan to Kennedy Airport.

  The AirTrain is a sleek, computer-operated train that connects the airport to local trains and subways at airy terminals in Jamaica and Howard Beach. But commuters coming from Manhattan, especially those taking the subway, must still endure a long ride and transfer. Proponents predict that the service will be popular nevertheless, because it will spare travelers from an unpredictable taxi ride that can take as long as two hours in bad traffic and costs $35 plus tolls and tip.

  According to the Port Authority, taking the Long Island Railroad from Penn Station to Jamaica, Queens, and then the Airtrain to the Airport should take 35 minutes, at a total cost of $11.75. But on the subway, the same trip takes an hour or more and costs a total of $7. The AirTrain alone is $5.

  Transit advocates point out that Cleveland got its rapid transit to the airport 30 years ago. Washington, Chicago, Paris and London all have model systems. In London, the trip from the center of the city takes 15 minutes. Meanwhile, Kennedy, which has more international passengers than any other airport in the country, has evolved into one of the nation’s least accessible, with chronic congestion on the two main routes to it, the Van Wyck Expressway and the Belt Parkway.

  Yesterday, a crowd of about 100 people, mostly just the curious, gathered at the Jamaica Terminal at 2 p.m. to be the first passengers. The trains were free until midnight.

  Many standing in taxi lines said they did not know about the new service. But when told that the service was free for the day, Lawrence W. Safer, visiting from Los Angeles, stepped out of a taxi line to try what he was told was a New York first.

  “It looks pretty cool on the outside,” he said.

  The Cityscape

  ARCHITECTURE & PARKS

  “Architects said nothing would be higher; engineers said nothing could be higher; city planners said nothing should be higher; and owners said nothing higher would pay.”

  That sounds like the recipe for a New York skyscraper—equal parts bravado, genius and limit-pushing. The architect Harvey Wiley Corbett had all three (and a client with plenty of money). The building he was talking about, one that he had designed, was the city’s tallest. In 1890.

  Years later E.B. White said New York had to expand toward the sky “because of the absence of any other direction in which to grow,” and even before the Great Depression, the race was on for bragging rights: my tall new building is taller than your tall new building. Everything on the skyline at the beginning of the twentieth century was dwarfed by the 792-foot-tall Woolworth Building, a five-and-dime-store millionaire’s dream that opened in 1913. The architecture critic Paul Goldberger said its tall and relatively thin shape added to the sense that one’s imagination could soar—if not get carried away: in the lobby are bas-reliefs of F. W. Woolworth himself, contentedly counting his nickels and dimes.

  PAGE 132

  Nowhere did the imagination soar higher than at the corner of 42nd Street and Lexington Avenue, where the Chrysler Building’s stainless steel top crowned a romantic fantasy too delicate for King Kong. Better to look down on it from the observation deck at the sleeker, plainer Empire
State Building, which came along in 1931.

  PAGE 106

  The Empire State Building is taller than the original blueprints said it would be. It grew by some 200 feet after the financier John J. Raskob looked at a scale model of the flat-topped original and said, “It needs a hat.” The one that was grafted on was designed as an airport in the sky. Passengers in gas-filled dirigibles were to de-blimp on the 102nd floor, but updrafts from Manhattan’s street-level canyons made landings all but impossible. Only two airships ever managed to tie up there. Both lifted off again without discharging any passengers.

  No buildings went that high for another forty years. Rockefeller Center, a city-within-the-city, spread out over block after block of Midtown Manhattan. It was praised by some as the most ambitious construction project since the Pyramids and panned by Lewis Mumford in The New Yorker as “mediocrity—seen through a magnifying glass.” The GE Building (originally the RCA Building) was tall, but not that tall. Neither were the MetLife Building (originally the Pan Am Building) or the General Motors Building on Fifth Avenue, to name two newcomers from the 1960’s.

  But New York’s architecture is not just about tall, taller and tallest, it’s about variety. On any avenue brownstones sit proudly next to massive high-rises that co-exist with flashy hotels. But some buildings are more distinctive than others: the triangular Flatiron Building, for example, looks like an ocean liner cruising up Fifth Avenue. It was so captivatng that the photographer Alfred Stieglitz said the Flatiron Building was to the United States as the Parthenon was to ancient Greece.