First published on the internet at Ziffi.com. Go to : http://xiffi.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=247:house-floats-and-another-crane-collapses-in-devilstown&catid=415:new-york&Itemid=76by Andrew Arnett
Yesterday someone slipped a flyer under my door and I just figured it was another take out menu from the Chinese restaurant down the street. As I was leaving I took a glance at the flyer and on it was some gibberish from the Lumus Construction Company about the closing of West 141st from Convent Avenue to Amsterdam, which happens to be my street, for the relocation of the Hamilton Grange on the 7th of June. I had no time to decipher the meaning of the missive and chalked it up to just one more inconvenience in a life already laden with such things. As I walked down 141st street towards the A train I passed something on Convent Avenue which didn’t quite register in my brain immediately, for I was on the phone with my friend Borrick, and we were discussing logistical issues for our next assignment. As I turned to do a double take I was still not sure if my mind was playing tricks with me or not, but there in the middle of the street was an old fashioned two story house floating fifty feet up in the air. Indeed, it was being lifted up by wooden pile ons, but the scene was so surreal I felt as if I had wandered into a painting by Magritte. I was in a hurry at the time but made a note to snap a picture of the damn thing at the next opportunity.
When I returned later in the afternoon, they had lowered the house by thirty feet but it was still looming there over the street, and there was a news truck from NY One, as well as a crowd of pedestrians gathered to snap pictures. It turns out that this was the former residence of the founding father Alexander Hamilton built in 1802. Thirty years after Hamilton died in a duel with Aaron Burr, the house wound up in the possession of the St Luke’s Episcopal Church, who eventually moved it to its present location. The Parks department plan to move it to 140th street but preservationists want the house moved to its original location further southwest. One of the bystanders commented of this dispute as “a battle between strict constructionists and architectural activists- Hamilton would have loved it.”
The next morning my X girlfriend called me on the phone but that was 7am, and I couldn’t make a move to answer it. I was up until 4am working with my new Boss BR-600 digital recorder and trying out the new Korg Micro-synthesizer. At 10:30 I listened to the message she left about the latest crane collapse on the upper east side of Manhattan. Regardless of everything that has passed between us, she’s still looking out for me. Indeed, I’m a lucky guy in this regards. I decided to make haste of the situation and grabbed my camera and press badge. I got a coffee at the corner café and started moving eastward. The location of the crane accident was at 91st Street and 3rd Avenue, so it was a matter of getting on the 4 train, I knew this much. But where to catch that train was still a mystery to me. Since I’d moved to Harlem, I’ve stayed pretty much close to the west side and Riverside Drive where things are reasonable. Once you start going eastward however, things begin to get a little dicey. I decided to cut through St. Nicholas Park with its tall sweeping trees and granite hills and just a few hobos looked at me oddly, wondering what someone like me was doing there, and for a moment I began to wonder myself until I remembered that, of course, I was going to cover a major news event in Devilstown, for Xiffi.com.
This was the second crane collapse in town in two months. The last one killed six people and pancaked an entire five story brownstone into a mere three feet pile of cement dust. With this latest collapse, the radio this morning reported at least one death and two injured thus far. Where will this all end? This was hardly a matter of coincidence, for there was certainly more going on behind the scenes. Something akin to a flagrant disregard for human life was more like it.
It turns out you can’t catch the 4 train in Harlem, at least not above 125th Street. I discovered this fact after running around like a witless hyena for too long. During that time, I had missed the major press conference by Mayor Bloomberg and Gov. Patterson at the sight of the wreckage. My X called to tell me that. To get to the 4 train, I was instructed by a cop to board a 2 train heading north, then change for the downtown 4 train at 138th St. in the Bronx. I ended up in the train yards instead, having mistakenly boarded the 1 train going to hell. Or so it seemed at the time. Instead of doing the story, I exited this maze of subway tunnels, hailed a cab, and instructed the driver to take me to a bar I new back on the west side that had air conditioning, cool drinks and a TV set to watch the story on television like other civilized people do.
Epilogue
This morning of June 7th, they moved the Hamilton Grange to its new home, just around the corner from its previous location and three blocks down the street from my house. It was a precise tactical maneuver which went off without a hitch. No deaths and/or no injuries reported. Also, in today’s paper, the headline read “CRANE BUST: INSPECTOR TOOK BRIBES”. The story stated that James Delayo, one of the city’s top crane inspectors, pocketed thousands of dollars in bribes from a construction firm and also sold copies of the crane-operator exam, according to authorities.
