NYC Energy & Infrastructure Ferry Tour
NYC’s East River…
not even a river!
However, its banks and especially its islands often hide the ugly essentials like waste, prisons, power plants, slaughterhouses, wastewater treatment, etc, etc…
On the East River Islands and Infrastructure Ferry Tour, we will traverse (almost) the entire East River, from Wall St to Rikers, exploring the history of electricity, gas, steam, and other infrastructure aboard the NYC Ferry.
The tour begins in the “First District” - named so because Thomas Edison’s Pearl St Station provided 110V DC power to the first residential electricity customers in the nation (1882-1895).
Edison’s private model contrasted with Tesla’s ethos of electricity for the people centered around my home region of Buffalo / Niagara.
If we don’t know about it, that usually means that the infrastructure we use is working well. When is the last time you worried about the quality of your gas service, water quality, or electricity in NYC, outside of a disaster?
NYC is not perfect, but this tour aims to highlight the behind the scenes work required for us to go about our fanciful little lives without worrying about our utilities, as well as the injustices that the city has traditionally hidden.
Let’s talk about steam!
Scenes like the one in the upper left image are pretty common in NYC, but why do we have steam emanating from underground?
This building probably looks familiar to you - it’s Con Edison’s E 14th St plant. While it does make some power, it mostly produces steam!
This Power plants in NYC mostly run on natural gas now, but as you can see in the 1934 painting above, they used to run on coal
