Exploring The World Through An Old Lens

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Black and White Photography, Ithaca, Landscapes, Nature, North Point, Ornithology, Photography, Stewart Park, Taughannock State Park, Travel, Upstate New York

This gallery contains 28 photos.

When I was little I used to play with my Dad’s camera- a Canon FTb given to him by his …

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The High Line: Nestled in the Bustle

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Elevated Parks, High Line Park, Historical Railway, Nature, New York City, Sustainable Parks, Writing

The dull roar of traffic on the Henry Hudson, punctuated by blasts of car horns, is muted for a moment by the wind blowing through birch trees. As you walk down the pathway of the High Line, the elevated park that currently stretches from Gansevoort Street to West 20^th Street (the first section of a three section plan), the small signs tucked among the landscaped, wild grasses remind you to “Keep it wild, keep on the path.” The park is built on an old freight track that delivered goods directly to the upper levels of factories on the West Side from 34^th Street to St. John’s Park Terminal at Spring Street. Where train cars used to run the length of this industrial route, tourists, friends, couples, and families stroll by the old rail tracks, artfully hidden under wild grasses, birches, thistles, and black-eyed Susans.

The concrete paths mimic the linear movement of the tracks. They propel you through the park, passing views of the Hudson River and the industrial buildings of the Meatpacking District and West Chelsea. The benches along the path follow this linear direction. The concrete supports slope up to join the wooden seat of the bench like part of a train rail. As the paths shift, the concrete sections of the walkway are integrated into the landscaping, grasses growing between the tapering ends of the slabs.  Train rails appear and disappear along with the wild flowers that give flashes of deep pink, cornflower blue, and earthy red among the dry browns and greens of the overgrowth. Iron slabs separate the planted areas from the paths in places. In others, the grasses reach out to brush against you as you walk. A visiting organic farmer remarked that he found himself worrying about ticks whenever the tall grasses brushed against his bare legs.

The dry smell of the grasses mixes with the smells of hot dogs from below. The weeds, growing from a brick wall adjacent to the 14^th Street passage, wave down at you before you walk through. They struggle for their lofty view, poking through the remnants of a blue tarp to see the activity below. People stroll along, and a High Line volunteer rides by on a tricycle. In one area, picnic-goers enjoy their sweets from the Magnolia Bakery on large wooden lounge chairs, footed with iron wheels on old pieces of rail. Further down, benches are set up against the motion of the path. Trees are scattered among the benches in this eddy where people rest and enjoy a view of the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building in the dappled shade.  Children run down the zig-zagging path of the observation area where cars appear from underfoot as they drive up 10^th Avenue. The pounding footsteps of the racing children drowns out the sound of the traffic below.

Though the High Line lifts you from the rush of the city streets, the visitor remains surrounded by the life of the city through the vistas granted by the park’s elevation. The Standard hotel straddles the park not far from its entrance at Gansevoort Street. A man wearing only a loosely tied blue robe steps up to one of the large, glass windows. Cigarette in hand, he spits out the open window, surveying the view below him. Further down a little boy exclaims upon finding tracks buried in the grasses, “Look Mommy, more train tracks!” A few feet away, a goldfinch nestles in the grasses, surrounded by the sounds of New York City.

Memories of Samuel Slater in a Forgotten Industry

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Christmas, Family, Nonfiction, Op-ed, Samuel Slater, Textile Mill, Webster MA, Writing

A jolly looking, blue-eyed Santa Claus gazes serenely at me from the computer screen, while a kitten claws at the tassel of his red hat. The headline jumps out at me in bold, black italics “Let the festivities begin! What better way to bring in the holiday cheer than with the beautifully rendered images of Christmas. Click on the image below to see more of this collection.”

I click on it out of curiosity, but as I stare at the images of Santa Claus with various cute animals and boxes of presents on this otherwise sparsely designed website, I am reminded that these “beautifully rendered images” of the fabrics made by Cranston Print Works, are no longer manufactured in textile mills within United States. The attempt at holiday cheer on their consumer website, cranstonvillage.com, falls flat when you click on the gray box with a small-sketched image of a dollar bill on the company’s website for employment openings. “Sorry, no open opportunities at this time,” you are told on the next page.

This sentence slashes the image given to me by my grandfather of the textile company where he worked for over forty years. My grandfather, Charles E. Dwyer, is a veteran of WWII. And before he thought I was old enough to look at the zip lock bags filled with pictures from his days in the South Pacific, he would point out the patterned cloths around the house and tell me how it was printed at Cranston Print Works. Or as I sat beside him, he would reach over and tug on a bit of my clothing if it had a printed design and tell me of a similar, but more superior, design they printed at the mill.

My grandfather joined the seven-year printer apprentice program at Cranston’s mill in Webster, MA after he returned from the War in the Pacific in 1945, where he served as a radio operator in the air navy. Eventually he became part of management as the head of the print room, a position he held with great pride. Most of my memories of the holidays involve my paternal side of the family swapping stories about their own childhoods around the snow pudding on the kitchen table at my grandparent’s house in Webster. Among the recounted tales, the town’s textile mill, run by Cranston Print Works, served as the measure and reference in most of the stories told.

Webster’s mill is one of the oldest in the country, founded in 1812 by Samuel Slater. It was through Slater’s efforts that the town of Webster was founded in 1936, as the area surrounding the Green Mill, the mill’s original name, had grown in population along with the industry. As time went on, the Slater family’s involvement with the mill faded. The Mill burned down and was rebuilt in 1878. And in 1936, the Cranston Print Works Company of Cranston, Rhode Island bought the mill. Webster’s mill, having been founded by Samuel Slater and owned for a time by the Rockefellers, became employee owned in 1987 when the Cranston Print Works Company became an employee owned company.

The Mill, or ‘Cranston’, as it was most often referred to by my grandfather, seemed to be the center and heart of the town. I am not a native of the small town in Central Massachusetts, so on the rare occasion we were nearing Webster during daylight, I would spy the tall smoke stack as we drove down Route 395 and realize we were about to arrive at my grandparents. Driving past the large building, knowing that this massive place made of brick had given my grandfather a plaque in recognition of his service to the company, was a source of great pride to me. I devoured the stories about my family as hungrily as I dug into my grandmother’s spice cake, feeling like I too, knew the Mill like the back of my hand.

The community that sprang up around the original Green Mill continued to grow and evolve along with the mill through the ownership of the Cranston Company. Cranston had a close relationship with the community. My Aunt Mary recalls Cranston giving presents to the children of their employees at an annual Christmas party. Generations of families worked at the mill through the years. In my family, my father and three of my five aunts and uncles worked there during the summers in high school and college.

Cranston Print Works used to be the largest printer in the world until the 90’s. That is when “U.S. trade policy began to erode our industry,” said George Schuster, the Cranston Print Chairman and CEO. In 1996, their mill in Rhode Island closed, followed by the mill in North Carolina in 1998. And at the end of May, 2009 the company’s move to shift their manufacturing and printing overseas was completed when they shut down production in Webster.

Today the Cranston mill in Webster is almost completely empty with only forty-five employees in the large brick building, as opposed to the near 700 that used to bring the building to life, churning out cloth with Santa on it for the holidays. The cloth my grandfather once printed is now made in China and other countries in the Pacific Rim. What is left behind in Webster is a building with a rich, cultural history that no longer supports the town that sprung up around it. Webster has joined the many American towns in which industry has migrated overseas. It is an old, textile mill town without an active mill. The trade that was passed down from Samuel Slater is gathering dust where it was born.

As the holidays draw near, the memories I have of driving past the mill and hearing stories about it, while visiting my grandparents, surface with the holiday decorations I see. But as I drove through Webster over the summer, passing the familiar triple-decker houses and the Webster Lake on my way to visit my grandfather in his assisted living home, I realized the images given to me by my grandfather of the Mill could no longer describe the reality I was seeing before me. When I passed the large brick building the gloom of its lifelessness washed over me, and it was clear that Webster will never be the same.