Floyd Bennett Field, New York’s first commercial airport, was built on Barren Island in 1928. It was built on terrain created with sand and fill, and dredge materials from the bay. When WWII broke out, it became part of New York Naval Air Station. In the 1970s, most of the property was turned over to the National Park Service. 34
SS President Harding
us lines postcard, p.d.
around the bay. A smaller-than-imagined concrete pier was also started for further use offloading fill, but the momentum soon was lost and work on this project ground to a halt. In the end, only one pier, 400 feet short of the one originally planned for, was built in Canarsie. It remains in place to this day, and has become a popular spot for local fishermen and picnicking families to gather throughout the year. The end of World War I brought about a small renaissance for the idea of turning the bay into a great port when the US Shipping Board’s Emergency Corporation opted to use Jamaica Bay as a temporary storage site for its fleet of mothballed merchant and naval ships. The first of these vessels entered Jamaica Bay on 4 March 1921, reigniting the stagnant hopes of many in the bay’s ability to play home to ships of such a large size. To build upon these reinvigorated hopes, a group of advocates chartered SS President Harding and toured Britain, France, and Germany, waving a blue flag with the words “Jamaica Bay Harbor” boldly displayed, attempting to secure overseas support for their cause. Flatbush Avenue was extended during this time, and by 1923 it would reach across to the bottom of Barren Island right up to the Rockaway Inlet.
photo by michael sedwick, wikipedia commons, (cc)
flooded in the process. Additionally, in anticipation of the future bulkheads and piers, natural streams were either stopped altogether or turned into basins, and a number of the smaller islands that dotted the waters were consolidated to form larger ones capable of sustaining the infrastructure necessary for creating a port that local officials hoped would become the envy of the world. Further plans were drawn up, calling for the construction of numerous canals and larger islands around the bay, plus a series of new rail lines to carry the vast quantities of anticipated imported goods from the area to market within the city. A few of the more ambitious plans even sought to cut a grand canal across the east end of the Rockaway peninsula to link Jamaica Bay with Great South Bay. In 1918, additional steps were taken towards the construction of the port when the city approved the construction of fourteen piers, all to be 1,000 feet long and 200 feet across, on Barren Island at the western edge of Jamaica Bay and at Mill Basin to the north. The first of these piers was slated for use by the Sanitation Department on Barren Island, where it would serve as an offloading point for landfill destined to expand other areas under development
Unfortunately for those who supported the project, soaring projected costs again put their grand idea on the backburner and, after a few years of stagnation, the plan was abandoned once more. Hope returned for a brief moment in 1933 when a 500-ton freighter pulled into Canarsie and people envisioned more to follow, but interest departed with the ship when it went on its way. One final, last-ditch effort to increase the appeal of the bay was made when supporters sought to bring the 1939 World’s Fair to Jamaica Bay’s shores, but this, too, was met with failure, dashing the final hopes of many who still held on that their plan might someday be revived. The city’s interest in the bay did have some lasting benefit, however; and due to this interest the city’s very first airport, Floyd Bennett Field, was constructed on Barren Island. Up through the nineteenth century and into the twentieth, Barren Island had been New York City’s primary dumping ground for animal carcasses that cropped up by the thousands each year on the city’s streets. The corpses, mostly horses, were hauled to a cove on the western end of Barren Island known as Dead Horse Bay, where they were boiled down into glue at rendering plants. The plan to build Floyd Bennett Field was, in part, an effort to shutter these factories. Advocates reasoned that if they could get the airport built, the city would need to close the factories to boost the impression of the city to visitors. After all, it would be a pretty poor impression of a city if, just before pulling into a brand-new port or shiny new air field, one first had to pass towers of rotting carcasses and mounds of refuse. Once city planners decided to go ahead with building an airfield on Barren Island, they were met with new problems. To transform the island into a site capable of sustaining international flights, the city would SEA HISTORY 164, AUTUMN 2018