cultural

16 April 2019 16 April 2019

An interesting case study in hidden hydrology from a region I’ve yet to discuss, Greece. Via the Telegraph, an article “Athens hatches ambitious plan to uncover fabled river, once the haunt of Socrates, and turn it into a park.” The river in question is the Ilissos, which, due to lack of maintenance on the subsurface tunnel in which the river flows has led to structural issues that has caused issues with the tram line running on the surface, and opened up opportunities for restoration of this ancient waterway. As mentioned:

“An 1821 water colour of the Ilissos River and the Temple of Olympian Zeus” – via Telegraph (image credit Alamy)

“Urban planners have suggested that rather than spending millions of euros on reinforcing the tunnel and repairing the track, the tram line should be diverted along a different route and the river opened up. They are proposing the creation of a park along a one mile stretch of the formerly forgotten river.”

Some context on the significance of this river, via the HYDRIA Project, “Ilissos river was considered in antiquity as the second main river of Athens, forming an horizontal landmark in its southern and eastern sides. Ancient writers mention various activities by its banks, varying from civic processes, cults -including a sanctuary dedicated to the river himself, by Ardittos hill- or social walks and philosophical endeavours in idyllic landscapes, as for Socrates and his disciples (Plato, Phaedrus 229-230, link). “

View of Athens from the River Ilissos – painting by Johann Michael Wittmer – via Greek City Times

Due to the dry climate, the Ilissos and the other river in Athens, the Kifissos, are often dry, as mentioned in the article. “Given Greece’s dry, hot climate, neither is huge – they are nothing like the Thames in London or the Tiber in Rome.” They do, however, act as places for floodwaters to run after winter rains, and the depths can reach up to six feet.

Map of Ancient Athens (Ilissos River highlighted by author) – via Ancient History Encyclopedia

From the BBC “Athens to open up ancient river“, the plan by Nikos Belavilas from the Urban Environment Lab shows the route of the proposed daylighting, restoring it after it was paved over in post-WWII development. You can see the location of the current configuration in the context of the historical routing above, including the Stadium and the Temple of Olympian Zeus, built by Hadrian.

Map of the Ilisos – via BBC (image via Urban Environment Lab)

Beyond daylighting, the restoration also has bigger implications, as a strategy to avoid future issues. As mentioned in the BBC article:

“But it is not just a simple matter of reclaiming the city’s past, but also of saving its present.”If the Ilisos tunnel collapses, it will block the natural course of the river, and could flood the entire city centre,” Mr Belavilas warns – “That doesn’t bear thinking about.”

Currently, only a small section is now visible on its path from the mountains, as mentioned in the Telegraph: “It originates in the mountains on the edge of the city and eventually flows into the Saronic Gulf, after passing almost unseen beneath the streets of the capital. It does emerge briefly, in reed beds behind the Temple of Olympian Zeus, which was built over several centuries starting in the second century BC. “

The only uncanalised part of the bed of Ilissos river that once ran outside the old city of Athens. – via Wikipedia

HEADER: River Ilisos and Stadion Bridge, ca. 1900 – via Wikipedia

06 November 2018 05 January 2023

Tanner Creek Farms Revisited

Jason Kingcity, creeks, cultural, general, history, maps, oregon, places, portland, streams, wetlandsLeave a Comment

As a followup to this post from about a year ago, Farming Tanner Creek, which delved into the history of Chinese farmers in Portland, this post picks that thread up by looking a bit closer at Marie-Rose Wong’s 2004 “Sweet Cakes, Long Journey: The Chinatowns of Portland” The book is a comprehensive look at the history of immigration and settlement and contributions to the development of Oregon and early Portland, integration into the city and its architecture, and frank accounts of local institutional racism and displacement, most notably the impacts of the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act.

As the title suggests, there were many incarnations of Chinatowns over the years in Portland focused around two zones. The first is the urban development zone of habitation that shifted shape running along the Willamette River to areas centered on Burnside and running to the north and south. These emerged first as a cohesive enclave, and later into a dispersed ‘non-clave’ that persists somewhat today in the small district of Old Town/Chinatown. The second is a zone of Chinese Vegetable Gardens further upland south of Burnside and west of 14th and provided more informal housing and opportunities for vegetable gardens. My focus here is on the latter, the farming zones inland along the banks of Tanner Creek, which Wong discusses and outlines their evolution over time, and how the fates of Chinese farmers and the creek were linked.

The three vicinities of Chinatown – From Wong, p.206

Much of the backstory here is found in the previous post, which focuses on a 2016 article by Putsata Reang in Oregon Humanities, entitled ‘The Farmers of Tanner Creek’ along with some additional information from Tracy Prince’s book “Portland’s Goose Hollow”. In this case, I was pretty fascinated by the dual narratives of the erasure of the Chinese Vegetable Gardens in tandem with the erasure of Tanner Creek, which is illustrated in the series of maps in Wong’s book, spanning 1879 to 1908.

Via “The Farmers of Tanner Creek” – Oregon Humanities “Tanner Creek runs between Chinese gardens and shanties, circa 1892. Providence Park, the Portland Timbers soccer stadium, now stands where these gardens once did. “

I took the liberty of adding a few items of color to these maps, focusing on the routing of Tanner Creek and the extents of the Portland Chinatown Vegetable Garden Community. As mentioned by Wong the roads “…were needed to serve an expanding population, but the flood-prone Tanner Creek and the gulch that meandered through this area were dominant nature features that controlled much of the building potential of the region.” (211) Thus improvements were required to tame this and create conditions better for development and expansion. Wong continues:

“In 1873, the old wooden bridge that spanned the creek connecting B Street to a small number of residences collapses in the rise water fed by winter rains, necessitating replacement and improvement. In July of that same year, the City of Portland contracted Chinese workers to construct a 115-foot cylindrical brick culvert sixty feet below the level of B Street. The culvert was to run along the bed of the creek, with some infill of the gulch to permit construction of a new bridge. At six feet in diameter, the culvert was large enough for a man to walk through and was intended to provide drainage for at least a hundred years. This improvement made it possible to control, if not totally prevent, flooding of the creek and associated erosion along the creek bed and the embankment up to street level.” (211)

The control of flooding by installation of the pipe of Tanner Creek allowed for the Chinese to occupy the site for gardening, as it no longer flooded. The first map from 1879 (p.210) shows a linear band of gardens along Tanner Creek parallel to B Street (current Burnside Street) which future road rights-of-way extending to connecting streets, but the creek had limited development of these roads, and the margins occupied with “Chinese Shanties”.

Between 1879 and 1889 the amount of area for Vegetable Gardens increased dramatically, from 3 acres to over 21 acres, as shown on the map below (page 214). The reduced flooding allowing for farming and Shanties to expand, filling the entire lowland zone. The new plank road to the east and a new wooden bridge spanned new developments towards Jefferson to the west.

1890s – Trestle bridge, Chinese vegetable gardens, Portland High School Courtesy Oreg. Hist. Soc. Research Lib., bb007389

The Creek was still intact through this zone as well, however starting to get chopped up with development on the edges. The ability of the Chinese to extract maximum production from this space was notable, as Wong mentions: “The immigrant gardeners… acted collectively, sharing the labor and the profits as they continued to farm the low-lying ground and slopes of the Tanner Creek Gulch. The Chinese applied their extraordinary agricultural skills, shared by Cantonese immigrants of rural background, to successfully cultivate the land.” (212)

As seen above, at the time, there was some development, but more residents were moving near here and building larger houses, and for a short time the two lived in close proximity with little issue.. “Perhaps the year-round beauty of the gardens and the convenience of easily available low-cost produce enable two such economically disparate and cultural distinctive social groups to coexist for many years.” (215)

The 1901 map (below, from page 216) shows the impact of a new resident, The Multnomah Amateur Athletic Club (now the current The MAC ), which displaced some of these gardens by moving into 5 acres to the north of the creek, using the natural slope as a viewing amphitheater and building a clubhouse. They also constructed considerable raised plank infrastructure on Alder Street, which eliminated gardens below there (but did keep the creek free flowing for a while longer). Farmers expanded the Shanties in existing areas, and moved to the area west of Jefferson where they installed new gardens and Shanties. The creek it seems to also have started disappearing more in this period. The drawing doesn’t show a key to connote what dashed lines mean versus solid, but it’s probably not a stretch to imply much more culverting of flows, and the plank roads also serving to visually disconnect the creek from views of residents.

By 1908 the map (from page 217) expansion of the city was reducing (to around 11 acres) the area of gardens even more as land became more desirable. The Creek was removed through conversion of bridges and plank roads into surface streets, which filled up gulches. This was a product of one of the “… city’s long-range projects for controlling flooding, raising the grade to accommodate roads, and encouraging urban residential development.” (218) The area near the Multnomah Amateur Athletic Club purchased the land and “over the next few years, both Tanner Creek and the land adjacent to it were filled to permit final construction of the athletic club and nearby homes.” (219)

Together with a number of ordinances aimed at reducing the number of Chinese vendors selling products, and finally just outright banning street peddlers in certain areas. As Wong concludes:

“Portland’s urban growth and expansion into the Tanner Creek area, the filling in of the creek, and the city ordinance that prohibited the rural Chinese from earning a living did irreparable harm to the fragile gardening community. A reporter’s prescient statement in 1889, that the time would likely come when ‘the gulches [would be] filled up and used as building site,’ had come to pass, and the Chinese Vegetable Gardens community disappeared from the record after 1910.” (220)

It’s a wonder as well that it lasted as long as it did, within the rapid urban expansion and the racist undercurrents at the time. The map sequence is a great snapshot in time to see Tanner Creek in the midst of Portland’s urbanization towards the end of the 19th Century. While, it is not totally clear graphically which portions of Tanner Creek were still remaining and which were buried, it shows a valuable sequential picture of the development of this portion of the city and how land shifted from that which had little value to some (and immense value for growing food for others) to becoming more necessary for further development. Gardens and creeks presented barriers to this progress and were slowly eroded and ultimately erased. Wong’s ‘Sweet Cakes, Long Journey‘ is an essential picture for understanding Chinese life and contributions to the history in Portland, of which the above is just one story. However, it is a critical one in terms of hidden hydrology, showing the displacement of Chinatown Vegetable Gardens in tandem with development that slowly buried Tanner Creek, forever losing it’s productivity as a creek and its ability to support agriculture in the city.

HEADER: 1892 Image of Chinese Gardens and Homes in Tanner Creek Gulch, Photo courtesy of Gholston Collection – image via Oregon Humanities, “The Farmers of Tanner Creek“

29 October 2018 29 October 2018

Portland, Oregon A.D. 1999

Jason Kingcity, climate, cultural, history, language, literature, places, portlandLeave a Comment

A search of the history of Portland will inevitably unearth a reference to a strange collection “Portland Oregon A.D. 1999 and Other Sketches” by Jeff W. Hayes. Published in 1913, this long story, often referenced in the realm of science fiction or futurism, envisions a Portland as remembered by the protagonist, an elderly woman recounting her visions of the future. As other utopian visions, it is both a product of its time and has an air of moralism, but if you read it as I did for some prescient thoughts on a future as envisioned over a century ago, it’s somewhat intriguing at time. A short bio of Hayes here from the UW Center for the Study of the Pacific Northwest gives a bit more context: “He framed this tale so that it resembled Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward (1888). The main character is an elderly woman who has seen Portland in the year 1999 and returns to the city around 1911 to offer “prophecies” of how life would change. Her predictions emphasize how technological change and social reform produced a sort of Christian socialism that would make Portland a nearly perfect city. Note how people of color are described at the end of the included text. In a chapter not included here, Hayes’s prophet envisioned a truly utopian transformation—doctors, lawyers, and ministers who work not for themselves but for the public good as defined by city commissioners.”

The reference to Bellamy’s work “Looking Backwards: 2000-1887” (which I have yet to read) is interesting as I recall that this was also a formative text for Ebenezer Howard, who wrote his 1898 “To-Morrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform” which was an early version of what was reprinted in 1902 as the more commonly known as “Garden Cities of To-Morrow” and the blueprint for Garden City Movement. I’m sure some further digging into Hayes would reveal some agenda for his writing Portland A.D 1999, but it seems like the use of common vehicle at the time to tell a good story, versus a manifesto in this case. While it is at certain times a bit boring, it does have some ideas worth noting excerpted here, but seriously you can read the whole thing in about 15 minutes (and for free, here).

I was struck off the bat with some of the statements, after setting up the scene, it’s mostly recounting scenes of different facets of life. Early on she visions things that were close to mark in terms of reality: “I could see people flying through the air in vehicles shaped like birds from the Atlantic to the Pacific and that the almost impenetrable forests of Oregon would one day be entirely laid low by the woodman’s axe.” (3) and while we’ve not achieved the sense of car-free city as outlined below, the idea of compactness and green-ness (perhaps with a bit more diversity than blue grass and roses) does hint at the city, and perhaps some things we could be focusing on more today:

“The city is compact and the business houses are lofty and well constructed, safety to occupants being the chief Care. “Owing to the fact that there are few, if any, automobiles or other rapid methods of travel to take up the streets of our city, there was an order issued by the City Commissioners removing the hard surface pavements and authorizing the Commissioner of Public Service to sow the streets in rye grass and Kentucky blue grass, so that the city of Portland is one perpetual system of parks, where the youngster may play to his heart’s content. Just imagine what a beautiful city we have and how our past day metropolis would pale into insignificance beside the picture I have drawn. Roses are planted in the streets and we are really and truly the ‘Rose City’.” (6)

Transportation does take a good portion of attention (including a strange balloon system for world travel – page 19). Presaging Elon Musk as well as many urban interventions for highway tunnels: “There are no more bridges across the Willamette river, tubes 75 feet wide at every other street taking the place of the bridges. These tubes are about a mile in length and start from Broadway on the West side and extend to Grand avenue on the East. Public docks extend from St. Johns to Milwaukie and cover both sides of the river, which is dredged the entire length of the dockage. “ With a nod to some of the land shaping that was more prevalent in Seattle, some of these interventions were a bit more ecologically destructive, such as hillside removal to create flat land for economic development, “Many of the hills back of the city, including Portland Heights, Kings Heights and Willamette Heights are leveled, only Council Crest with its historic traditions being allowed to remain. This gives a vast area to West Portland which is really vital to its business supremacy.” (7)

There are allusions to grand designs (reminiscent of City Beautiful), where ““The city, county and state buildings embrace five continuous blocks beginning at Jefferson Street running north, taking in Madison, Main, Salmon, Taylor and Yamhill Streets, each building being ten stories high and connected at each third story with its companion on the opposite side of the street for a distance of five blocks, making it practically one solid building five blocks long and each building ten stories high.” (8) With a utopian nod, Hayes does envision that police, and half of the judges were women, mentioning pioneering Portland suffragette Abigail Scott Duniway as an inspiration. The moralism extends to some inherent racism, in particular around token remnants of Native Americans and Asian immigrants in the city, with oddities like “The Chinamen, more particularly have fallen into the customs of the white neighbors and a much better feeling is manifest on both sides, which knocks the dreaded bugaboo about the yellow peril.” (14) Perhaps in that whiteness of spirit, it is mentioned things like lack of crime and the absence of jails, and in general “…less roystering, riotousness and lawlessness than existed earlier in the century.” (9) But is odd when directed towards schools with “…little need for an elaborate education, children are not compelled to go higher than the sixth grade, the rest of their education being made up by practical experience later in life.” (10)

The funniest moral statement, especially in the context of how many breweries, wine bars, and distilleries exist in Portland today, is around alcohol, as ““It was in the year 1950 that it became quite observable that corn, wheat, rye and other cereals entering into the production of alcohol had lost the power to ferment and to be converted into beer, wine and whiskey. This was a startling announcement to the old topers but it was nevertheless a fact and the science of making alcohol has become a lost art.” Weinhards and other brewers instead, thrive by’ “manufacturing a beverage which exhilarates but does not inebriate.” (16) I’m guessing this is the precursor for Kombucha, right?

A few interesting items that were interesting in terms of communication, include such things like video phones, computers (or the improvement of typewriters), and wireless, at least in some incarnation. For instance, futuristic Facetime “not only talk to a person over a wire, but you can actually see them, life size and just as they are, exactly as if you were talking to them face to face.”, wifi and the prevalence of cell phones ““Much telephoning is now being done by wireless and that branch of the service has developed greatly and is used to communicate with aerial vehicles.”, and perhaps scanning coupled with AI such as Alexa:“Take for instance, an item cut from a daily paper and paste it on the cylinder, or disc, and without further preparation, a voice will read off the item to you in a plain, clear tone.” (36-37)

On a larger scale, hints echoing the amazing reputation for sustainability was interesting, with lots of forward-thinking technologies mentioned, like “The lighting of the city is done by one immense electric light suspended in the air at a height of several thousand feet which illumines the city as bright as the brightest day.” and perhaps an early Eco-District idea, with “Heat is furnished by the city through a thorough pipe system and it is compulsory on all citizens to patronize the city’s heat.” Also mentioned is sustainable agriculture, with horticultural practices, “as a result many new fruits and vegetables have been put on the market, their flavor and excellence outstripping anything known in the early twentieth century.” (17) Further, open spaces are a big deal as they are today, even going so far as to replace previous taken lands. “Cemeteries have been turned into play grounds, tomb stones removed and no vestige of the former gruesome abode of the dead is visible.” (31)

And the biggest miss was the opposite of climate change, Instead of our rapidly melting poles, in this future “Ice was forming at the South Pole, each year encroaching more and more towards the north and some alleged scientific men predicted that the time would surely come when the ice deposit at the South Pole would be come so great and the weight so heavy, that it would result in throwing the earth off its present axis, probably tipping up old Mother Earth and reversing the positions of the Equator and the Poles.” (38). Crisis was averted due to volcanic eruptions melting this ice-cap, so we were not thrown off axis, but no hints were given as to what future catastrophe that held… perhaps something for the future.

From a specific focus on a water perspective, this was the age of progress and modernization, it is mentioned the massive yield increases which hint similarly to the Green Revolution aiding in huge production of wheat in Eastern Oregon, shipped through Portland through all parts of the world. Closer to Portland, the use of waterways is more traditional, mentioning that “Columbia Slough was reclaimed and most of the manufacturing industries are carried on at that point.” (7) assumes a slightly different take on ‘reclamation’. The more grandiose “movement on foot away back in 1905 to harness the ocean’s waves, but it was determined to be unfeasible. Later on, it was demonstrated that the project was a simple one and now the highway to the ocean is lined with poles carrying power developed by the ocean waves which gives an endless and inexhaustible supply and which is cheap and always reliable. This means of securing power is utilized the entire length of the Pacific Ocean, Atlantic Ocean and on all the Great Lakes, Chicago being the first city to try the experiment from the waters of Lake Michigan. “This discovery has had the good effect of making it possible to properly conserve the nations water supply and has created a new industry. Irrigation by means of huge air tanks filled with water and allowed to rain upon parched spots is the present method of irrigating and it works wondrously well.” (29)

Water supply was also mentioned, in the grand tradition of big infrastructure. While the Bull Run was logical, stretching a bit further north seemed excessive. As mentioned, “It was deemed necessary, about the year 1951 to in crease the water supply for the City of Portland and it was ascertained that the conditions at Mount Hood for bade looking to that place for a greater supply and it was decided to utilize the, as yet, great and untouched abundance of water offered by Mount St. Helens, and three years later the pipe line was completed, and water from beautiful St. Helens was turned into the new and immense reservoirs constructed for the ever-increasing population.” And in an interesting switch, the idea of eruption had some truth but was focused a bit on the wrong mountain, as Hayes’ protagonist states: “It was fortunate for the city that this new supply was projected and consummated just at this time for it was but a year later that Mt. Hood, which had been groan ing for some time began to belch forth from its intes tines a mass of smoke and lava which bared the moun tain of snow and caused much consternation among our people. The volcano continued active for several weeks, at intervals, finally entirely subsiding and it has been on its good behavior now for 25 years. Repairs were made to the pipe line and Portland, today, is getting a portion of its water supply from Mt. Hood as of yore.” (35)

Also, on topic of irrigation and water supply, the technologies for irrigation seem wildly odd, as outlined on page 11, in which is discussed:

“What might appear to the people of 1913 as very extraordinary, is the manner in which the streets of the city are sprinkled. A huge air bag with a rubber hose attachment is allowed to rise to a height of about 1,000 feet and water from the Willamette river is pumped up into it by the good old fire boat … “Attached to the air bag is a regular sprinkling machine… it is allowed to fall on the city, the air bag, of course, frequently shifting its position to give all parts of the city an equal show for a rain storm. This process is used whenever there is a drought in Multnomah county which, thank the Lord, is a seldom occurrence.”

The people of 2018 would think that is extraordinary as well. Read it, it’s fun.

HEADER: Unrelated, but I figured representative image of a Future City – Tullio Crali’s ‘Architecture’ – 1939, via Reddit

05 October 2018

Los Angeles River in Places Journal

Jason Kingcity, cultural, history, infrastructure, los angeles, maps, places, rivers, streams1 Comment

There is no shortage of articles written on the Los Angeles River, and I’ve covered some of the broader hidden hydrology work being done there in a previous post here, Beyond the LA River. I do however have a special affinity for the quality of scholarship on Places Journal, and an essay from May 2018, Willful Waters by USC’s Vittoria Di Palma and Alexander Robinson doesn’t disappoint. This longform essay provides a great background and historical framework for anyone wanting to understand the river and it’s long and contentious history, as well as recent efforts of revitalization and reconnection. It also comes with a great collection of historical imagery, which elevates our thinking out the past, present, and future river beyond the concrete ditch we tend to associate with the Los Angeles River.

I’d recommend the essay in its entirety, so I’ll just include a few snippets and comments I thought were compelling. At first I was a bit confused about their allusion to the Thomas Cole series The Course of Empire in this context, but after some explanation, it’s an interesting framework in which to think about hidden hydrology, in terms of binaries such as life/death or sin/redemption, and as a “cyclical” journey from wildness through some sort of apex and back through destruction and desolation. That narrative begins another cycle of “revitalization” and “restoration”. As the authors mention: ” If not for the galvanizing effect of a set of historical ideas — the belief that a site, destroyed and degraded by human industry, could be transformed into something evocative of its original condition through the power of “nature” guided by enlightened design — Los Angeles might have continued to forget that it ever was a river city.”

Los Angeles River in the early 20th century. [Security Pacific National Bank Collection, Los Angeles Public Library] – via Places

From a historical viewpoint, the idea of a soft, meandering river is hard to comprehend, but also is the origin of the city itself, supporting described as “…a stream trickling through a wide sandy bed.” with “The river basin was overspread with springs, marshes, and shallow ponds (the very name of La Cienega Boulevard recalls the landscape’s original swampy character), and the debris from the mountains, deposited over centuries, created a layer of alluvial silt that in some areas lies 20,000 feet thick.” This lack of structure meant lots of variability, which created unpredictable volatility during storms and “rain events” in which “…waters would rush down from the mountains, carrying gravel, silt, boulders, and trees.” This factor would ultimately lead to the demise of the river itself.

Edward O.C. Ord and William Rich Hutton, Plan de la Ciudad de Los Angeles, 1849. [Los Angeles Public Library] – via Places

The other interesting idea was the concept of zanjas (irrigation ditches), in which there were miles built as shown in the above map: Quoting John Shertzer Hitell, “The “zanjas, or irrigating ditches, run through the town in every direction.” They “vary in size, but most of them have a body of water three feet wide, and a foot deep, running at a speed of five miles an hour. They carry the water from the river to the gardens, and are absolutely necessary to secure the growth of the fences, vines, and many of the fruit trees.” The image below showing how these canals were parts of the fabric of the city, enclosed but still open and visible, and enlivened the place, as mentioned in a reference to visitor Emma Adams, who commented on “…the soft murmuring of water as it glides through the zangas [sic] in some of the beautiful suburbs of the city is sweet music to the ear, a happy voice sending out joy and gladness. Wherever it is heard are sure to be seen verdure, flowers, and fruit.” In this way, the wild and unpredictable Los Angeles River was remade into a tractable urban water source.”

A canal, or zanja, on Figueroa Street, Los Angeles, ca. 1892. [Security Pacific National Bank, Los Angeles Public Library] – via Places

The manipulation of the river for utilitarian purposes followed many others before it, but foreshadowed larger interventions of control. As the authors point out, “Los Angeles was shaped by a dual need to be at a safe distance from its unpredictable, flood-prone river, and in close contact with the river’s highly controlled, artificial reincarnation: the zanja madre and its network of ditches. This relationship between city, river, and ditch is illustrated by the map drawn up by Ord and the surveyor William Rich Hutton in 1849. Agricultural lands occupy the area between the river and the city up on the Elysian Hills, with the southerly extension of both fields and city closely conforming to the route of the zanja madre. At the same time, the problematic nature of the flood-prone river is indicated by this inscription: “sand over which the River spreads its waters which are wasted.” They go on to conclude that,“The zanja madre was, in other words, the Los Angeles River tamed and perfected by the improving force of human culture.”

Los Angeles River and the Fourth Street Bridge, 1931. [Herald-Examiner Collection, Los Angeles Public Library] – via Places

The river at the time was still natural in most places, but the canals soon depleted water levels, and created a trickle, which was the impetus for Mulhollad’s hyperbolic yet apt “Titanic Project to Give [the] City a River”. After this change to more consistent supply, which included piped water from the Owens Valley some 233 miles away via aqueduct, the Los Angeles River only emerged during rain events, those “… “intermittent moments when it flowed with a violence that only intensified as galloping urbanization further hardened the city’s watershed. No longer valued as a natural resource, the ever-wilder river was now feared as a “predator,” able to roam and strike wherever it wished.” This unpredictability and ensuing series of floods changed how people thought, thinking of the river as a “menace” and thus “perceptions of the river were changed irrevocably.”

Los Angeles River at Griffith Park, ca. 1898–1910. [California Historical Society Collection, USC] – via Places

The flooding was the final impetus to use new technology to “train” the “unruly dog” of a river, which seemed to be the particular bailiwick of the Army Corps of Engineers, and creating what amounted to a “water freeway” that we know today. In a few short years, the Corps“ …systematically transformed the Los Angeles River from an intermittent, meandering stream bordered by willows and cottonwoods into the concrete storm drain we see today.” The authors point of the lesson of this today.

“In a textbook example of the triumph of reason and human agency over willful nature, the Corps created the ultimate Los Angeles fantasy of a river: a “water freeway.” That a drought-prone region would celebrate the speed at which water could be drained off to the ocean was an irony not then appreciated by either the military engineers or the public.”

Los Angeles River, San Fernando Valley, 1949. [Valley Times Collection, Los Angeles Public Library] – via Places

Perceptions changed in the 1970s, and the media, politicians, artists, and environmentalists rediscovered the river in a variety of ways. A series of articles in the Los Angelse Times by Dick Roraback in 1985 entitled , ” “Up a Lazy River, Seeking the Source: Your Explorer Follows in the Footsteps of Gaspar de Portola.” provided a poignant story about the forgotten waterway, where “… the author narrated his expedition from the river’s mouth to its putative source, chronicling the riparian habitats of its flora and fauna. Roraback’s picaresque tale turned the Los Angeles River into an incongruous backdrop for a cast of quirky urban characters (the blonde waitress, the salty sea dog, the mussel gatherer, the dog-walking divorcée) engaged in various activities, both licit and illicit, in the river and along its banks. By presenting the river as a neglected urban feature, the series brought its paradoxical charms to the attention of a large new audience, and, crucially, positioned the river as a postindustrial terra incognita — an attractive, slightly dangerous, and alluring urban landscape.”

Further work by artists and others who started exploring the waterway, and ultimately went on to found the Friends of the Los Angeles River, started to think about the area in different ways, and through exploration, began as a “…characterization of the river as a paradise lost, a place of discarded things and marginalized people, served to ignite a potent landscape imaginary. It also introduced the idea of the river as a space for environmental action. ” This was aided by the Donald C. Tillman Water Reclamation Plant which added 20 million gallons of water per day, which had an effect of revitalizing the ecology of the river. “This infusion of wastewater generated a verdant riverscape, which in turn, and somewhat improbably, inspired comparisons with the earlier paradise described by Father Crespí and sparked talk of a riparian rebirth. As the changing river increasingly evoked that lost, idealized waterway (particularly in the unpaved eleven-mile stretch known as the Glendale Narrows), it also inspired residents to take up walking, bike riding, bird watching, horseback riding, and even kayaking and canoeing…”

Los Angeles River, Glendale, with a bicycle path along the banks. [Creative Commons] – via Places

The kayaking wasn’t always for pleasure, as it was interesting to learn that a waterway has to be navigable to be eligible for the Clean Water Act, so a group of people in 2008 kayaked the length of the river to provide its navigability. This meant that maybe “The fantasy of transforming the flood control channel into an arcadian waterway began to seem real. Kayaking has also become a powerful means of introducing visiting dignitaries to a vision of a newly green and civic river.” The final part focuses on the long and winding road of Revitalization, including master plans in through the 1990s and more recently efforts by interdisciplinary design teams, government agencies, and non-profits. These focused on ecology, hydrology, and recreation, amongst other factors, either as technical studies but more often than not art intervetions or designs. One such example is the Piggyback Yard Feasibility Study (image below), done by Mia Lehrer + Associates, which “…integrates economic and hydraulic modeling with community design considerations, but such efforts such are still few in number and small in scale.”

Piggyback Yard Feasibility Study, Mia Lehrer + Associates. [Mia Lehrer + Associates] – via Places

The mix of design, art, tours, and other creative methods of interpretation, often using minimal intervention, hint at “…the remarkable activity generated by the Los Angeles River — which as yet remains largely a concrete channel bisected by a thin course of water — testifies to the profound power of the city’s desire for ecological redemption and urban rebirth, and to ways in which civic or even poetic acts have found purchase within a byzantine network of managerial interests.”

Endnote:

The post in Places referenced above is an excerpt from what sounds like a great book, River Cities, City Rivers published by Harvard University Press and edited by Thaisa Way. Will track down and report on at some point on this book, but here’s a summary from the site: “Cities have been built alongside rivers throughout history. These rivers can shape a city’s success or cause its destruction. At the same time, city-building reshapes rivers and their landscapes. Cities have harnessed, modified, and engineered rivers, altering ecologies and creating new landscapes in the process of urbanization. Rivers are also shaped by the development of cities as urban landscapes, just as the cities are shaped by their relationship to the river. ¶ In the river city, the city river is a dynamic contributor to the urban landscape with its flow of urban economies, geographies, and cultures. Yet we have rarely given these urban landscapes their due. Building on emerging interest in the resilience of cities, this book and the original symposium consider river cities and city rivers to explore how histories have shaped the present and how they might inform our visions of the future.”

HEADER: Los Angeles River, view from 6th Street Bridge, 2010. [Ian Rutherford] – image via Places

01 October 2018

Anne Whiston Spirn’s Legacy in Philadelphia

Jason Kingcase study, city, climate, creeks, cultural, design, ecology, history, infrastructure, landscape, maps, philadelphia, places, precedents, streams, watershedsLeave a Comment

The most recent October issue of Landscape Architecture Magazine (LAM) has a great story on hidden hydrology inspiration Anne Whiston Spirn, FASLA, titled Where the Water Was, which highlights the “long arc” her work in West Philadelphia, namely the “water that flows beneath it.”

The aha moment is recounted in the article, the inspiration for the poem linked above “The Yellowwood and the Forgotten Creek“, as recounted in the article, she “was on her way to the supermarket, when she was stopped at a gaping hole where the street had caved in over the Mill Creek sewer. “I looked down and saw this big, brown rushing river, and all this masonry that had fallen in. I thought, ‘My God, there are rivers underground. We’re walking on a river.'” (122) Sprin’s work spans decades since that story in 1971, predominately around Mill Creek which was “buried in the brick sewer pipe in the 1880s”, morphing into the West Philadelphia Landscape Project (WPLP) [covered in brief on our post on Philadelphia here]. While I was inspired as a student and professional by her work on books like The Landscape of Landscape and The Granite Garden, her work on hidden streams was perhaps the most powerful for me, both as an object of study but more broadly to leverage this research into a vehicle for positive change. As mentioned, the WPLP website “contains maps, historical documents, reports and studies.” including an updated interactive timeline, and some newer updated interactive mapping which is good to see, as much of the interface until late was a bit dated.

A long way from the preliminary maps in CAD as part of the early mapping in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The sophistication and breadth of this work at the time is telling thought, and I remember seeing these for the first time in college and being amazed. The article shows what many of us know, which is how much of what we take for granted in technology of mapping that’s available to us today, and how hard it was, physically and sometimes politically to get good information. As Spirn mentions “You had to literally go out and field check.” (134)

The takeaways of this early work was to both connect the above ground with what was underground, both historically in predevelopment hydrology but also with sewer routing and burial of waterways. As mentioned, the idea that is a constant with Spirn of “reading the landscape” was instilled as a way to understand the full picture of a site or district. The connection of the physical features with the social is also evident as Spirn is quoted: “It’s a pattern of eastern old cities and across the U.S., where lower-income folks are living in the bottomlands… Many are literally called the Black Bottom.” (126) From this analysis, the idea of mapping and using vacant lands was a way to solve the hydrological problems of flooding or sinkholes, but also to revitalize communities.

The Buried River from Anne Whiston Spirn on Vimeo.

How to do it was an issue, as recounted in the article, ideas where one thing, but changing minds into action was another. McHarg’s Design With Nature inspired her writing The Granite Garden, not as an academic treatise, but rather “…to fill a void. Scientific journals, historical documents, topographic maps, all sorts of materials contained a wealth of information for ecological designers, but no one had pulled it together in a comprehensive, understandable book that could guide designers as well as the public.” (127) This book influences generations of landscape architects in many ways beyond merely historical ecology, but in how we think and communicate. For the project itself, Adam Levine (who is the mind behind the PhillyH20 project which i documented previously) found the 19th Century maps “that showed Mill Creek and its tributaries before the land was developed. Spirn’s students digitized those surveys and overlaid them on the city’s topographic maps, finally getting an accurate depth of fill along the floodplain. “We found it’s buried up to 40 feet in some areas…”” (134)

The actions were part of this research as well, and many interesting strategies came from the Vacant Lands report (see here), as well as a number of other projects, many of which took a long time to become reality, or came with ups and downs of poor implementation or. The successes came, owing to the persistence of Spirn and her local compatriots in West Philadelphia, summed up in the article simply:

“Change is a bit like a buried creek. It’s hard to remember its origins. Its many branchings are invisible.” (137)

The legacy locally is a series of activists still working on landscape and community building. Beyond that, there’s an army of landscape architects inspired by this project and her writings, and her life-long spirit of advocacy. A great homage to a wonderful teacher and landscape hero. Lots of great info in the article – which unfortunately isn’t available digitally at this time.

HEADER: Snapshot of Interactive Map of Mill Creek – via

24 September 2018 24 September 2018

A Place for the Senses, Part 2 – Soundscapes

Jason Kingart, creeks, cultural, explorations, history, infrastructure, language, maps, rivers, soundscape, streams1 Comment

A few months back, I posted part one of this dual post on sensory ways of interpreting spaces and art with a focus on the amazing work around Smellscapes. Part two, as advertised, will shift gears a bit, to think about Soundscapes, and how audio can be used to illuminate places, tell stories, and engage the senses in new ways. And there’s a lot of exciting stuff happening in this space, and this will barely scratch the surface of what people are doing, but I am focused mostly on that which is relevant to the agenda of hidden hydrology, or in ways that are not directly relevant, could inspire some new methods of intervention and interpretation.

The idea of sound is expressed in a number of interesting ways, and more importance is placed on soundscapes in design, or the larger urban sphere, and the impacts of things like noise and how it impacts humans and other species. Or conversely, it may just be confronting the dilemma posed by White Noise, in their article about innovative sound artists “The Trouble With Sound Is That It’s Invisible.” New ways of thinking about these topics more holistically show up under terms like Acoustic Ecology, or Sonic Ecology, which thinks about it from a broader way of thinking. From the abstract of a introductory paper on Soundscape Ecology , the idea for the authors is that:

“The study of sound in landscapes is based on an understanding of how sound, from various sources—biological, geophysical and anthropogenic—can be used to understand coupled natural-human dynamics across different spatial and temporal scales.”

A great resource on the topic I’ve found is The Acoustic City, which is a book/CD and website focused “on sound and the city… The book comprises five thematic sections: urban soundscapes with an emphasis on the distinctiveness of the urban acoustic realm; acoustic flânerie and the recording of sonic environments; sound cultures arising from specific associations between music, place, and sound; acoustic ecologies including relationships between architecture, sound, and urban design; and the politics of noise extending to different instances of anxiety or conflict over sound. This innovative essay collection will be of interest to a wide range of disciplines including architecture, cultural studies, geography, musicology, and urban sociology.”

INTERACTIVE SOUNDSCAPES/WALKS

There’s a number of leaders in the field, but I will lead off with one of the rock-stars of this sub-genre that is doing inspired work around water is Leah Barclay, who seems to be everywhere doing amazing work. From her bio: “Leah Barclay is an Australian sound artist, composer and researcher working at the intersection of art, science and technology. She specialises in acoustic ecology, environmental field recording and emerging fields of biology exploring environmental patterns and changes through sound. Over the last decade her work has focused on the conservation of rivers, reefs and rainforests through interdisciplinary creative projects that inspire communities to listen.” One such installation is called Hydrology, which is a collection of sounds “…recorded using hydrophones (underwater microphones) in freshwater and marine ecosystems across the planet.” and River Listening, which is “an interdisciplinary collaboration designed to explore the creative possibilities of aquatic bioacoustics and the potential for new approaches in the conservation of global river systems.” Her work is also available at this interesting site 100 Ways to Listen, from Queensland Conservatorium Griffith University, which has a ton of great soundscape info, focusing on “exploring the art and science of sound and documenting a decade of innovative music-making.”

The idea of interactive sound around water has a few specific precedents worth focusing on hidden hydrology directly. A project I mentioned a few years back is relevant, SCAPE’s work in Lexington, Kentucky. which featured that of a series of listening stations and a self-guided ‘Water Walk‘ for their project around Town Branch Commons, to tell the story giving users: a broad understanding of the biophysical area around the Town Branch, reveals the invisible waters that run beneath the city, and demonstrates some of the impacts each resident of Lexington can have on the river and its water quality. By sharing how water systems and people are interrelated—both locally and globally—the Town Branch Water Walk makes stormwater quality relevant, linking it with the history, culture, and ecology of the city.”

Another project that really embodies the potential of this is a School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) project from professor Linda Keane and artist Eric Leonardson called RiverWorks, which is described as “…an interactive transient sound mapping and community engagement series of classes that reimagines and visualizes the sustainable world above and beneath the surface of the Chicago River. Challenging engagement with water, water habitats, water conservation and water quality, students activate new connections and thinking about the Chicago River as a healthy, working and recreational ecology. Inspired by John Cages’ 1978 Dip in the Lake series of acoustical experiences throughout Chicago, the course captures sounds of water, water use and misuse in the city.”

Students explore and create art, around walking, sensing, and as a project called River Listening, which is exciting as an “interdisciplinary collaboration examines creative possibilities for marine bioacoustics and the potential for new approaches to the conservation of urban global river systems… students fabricate hydrophones for listening for wildlife diversity below the river’s surface. Connecting invisible riverine life with urban water infrastructure, River Listening activates familiar places with unfamiliar information creating immersive spaces. Students experience interactive listening labs and document field recordings in preparation for sound maps, spontaneous performances, and installations that creatively use everyday technologies.”

An article in Open Rivers Journal from 2017 by Christopher Caskey provides a fascinating context for this work. “Listening to a River: How Sound Emerges in River Histories” which posits that environmental historians could use sound more to develop inquiry into environments. Drawing from Peter Coates article “The Strange Stillness of the Past: Toward an Environmental History of Sound and Noise”, in which Coates “argues both for “knowing nature through sound” and “picking up nature’s voices” in his case for analyzing sound in environmental history”, the article focuses this idea on rivers, ending with this important conclusion:

“Rivers are particularly auditory places. They make their own sounds and they have played important roles in influencing aural culture. Whether as a storytelling device, as part of an analysis, or even as an inclusion for the sake of posterity, the sounds of a river, both past and present, are worth documenting as part of the historical record.”

SOUND MAPS

An interesting strategy is to provide maps of sounds, which tie the auditory with the spatial, as mentioned in this abstract “growing research initiatives that take up soundmapping as a way of inquiring into pressing spatial, geo-political and cultural issues primarily in cities and also in the endangered wilds.” This happens in a few ways, but can include modern soundscapes, where there are no shortage of maps and sites documenting the sounds of places, including global maps, such as this one from Cities and Memory, or Locus Sonus and to cities as diverse as Charlottesville, Virginia, Florence, Italy, Shanghai, China, and Montreal, Canada (below)

Each map comes with its own agenda, which ranges from nature sounds, biodiversity, urbanization, transit, social spaces, art or even places of quiet. The key, is that these maps have to have some agenda or viewpoint and have some innovative delivery method, otherwise, they will be boring, as pointed out in this great opinion piece on the subject, “Sound Maps in the 21st Century: Where Do We Go From Here?”

The idea of mapping historical sounds does have a viewpoint, as it allows ways of connecting to the past, and appreciating the changing nature of urban environments. One of my favorites is The Roaring Twenties, which gives an extensive spatial overview of NY City by coupling noise complaints and newsreels with places and sounds – giving a hint of a place, more focused on the man-made than natural sounds, but the section ‘Harbor & River’ connects a bit with the hydrology, along with some info on Sewer/Water Construction.

Another extensive example is the London Sound Survey, which is a really ambitious project (more here). There’s interesting maps of a range of topics both contemporary and historical, including the hydrological, focusing on both exportation of the Thames Estuary, and a map of London’s waterways “An auditory tribute to Harry Beck’s Underground map, the skeleton which has long lent shape to the city in the minds of Londoners. Here sounds were collected from along London’s canals and lesser rivers.”

MUSIC

A number of interesting projects focus on music, which can be used to creatively engage with the environment. Re:Sound is an experimental music series which explores the relationship between forgotten spaces, sound abstraction and the natural environment.

The ClimateMusic Project is another sort of endeavor with a larger mission to “…enable the creation and staging of science-guided music and visual experiences to inspire people to engage actively on the issue of climate change. As an analogy for climate, music is familiar, accessible, and—for most people—much easier to relate to than articles or lectures. We created The ClimateMusic Project to harness this universal language to tell the urgent story of climate change to broad and diverse audiences in a way that resonates, educates, and motivates.”

The use of apps is an interesting option as well, melding GPS and music to orchestrate unique experiences that change and evolve as one moves through space. One I’ve always been excited about is by Bluebrain from 2011 and their installation“‘Central Park (Listen to the Light)’ … a site-specific work of music that responds to the listeners location within the stretch of green of the same name in New York City… work by tracking a users location via the iPhones built-in GPS capabilities. Hundreds of zones within the landscape are tagged and alter the sound based on where the listener is located in proximity to them. Zones overlap and interact in dynamic ways that, while far from random, will yield a unique experience with each listen. The proprietary design that is the engine behind the app stays hidden from view as the melodies, rhythms, instrumentation and pace of the music vary based on the listeners’ chosen path…. The app is the work itself. A musical ‘Chose-Your-Own-Adventure’ that does not progress in a linear fashion but rather allows the listener to explore the terrain and experience music in way that has never been possible before now. “Read more about this in a NY Times article ‘Central Park, The Soundtrack‘ from when it was released as well, and check out a short video here.

Phantom Islands is an interesting work that exists in the peripheral vision of Hidden Hydrology. Developed by experimental musician Andrew Pekler, which was part of an oddly intriguing show called Fourth Worlds, Imaginary Ethnography in Musical and Sound Experimentation. From the site: “Phantom Islands are artifacts of the age of maritime discovery and colonial expansion. During centuries of ocean exploration these islands were sighted, charted, described and even explored – but their existence has never been ultimately verified. Poised somewhere between cartographical fact and maritime fiction, they haunted seafarers’ maps for hundreds of years, inspiring legends, fantasies, and counterfactual histories. Phantom Islands – A Sonic Atlas interprets and presents these imaginations in the form of an interactive map which charts the sounds of a number of historical phantom islands.”

A screenshot of it is below of one of the ‘entries’, but you really have to go experience it, let loose and have fun.

And, closing the loop on the musical side, there’s a fun Billboard article ‘10 Songs About Rivers‘ which, I feel, focused a bit much on the contemporary and missed some classics, but fun to think about. The BBC has plenty of interesting music, such as the session on Playing the Skyline, in which “musicians look at how the land meets the air and imagine it as music.” And if we’re getting fully into the influence of environmental on music, a series of works by composer Tobias Picker inspired by Old and Lost Rivers, and even a Lost Rivers Opera from the Czech Republic, which i had a link to in the past but is now no longer working (anyone help there?)

So much more to explore, but this at least provides a primer on sound, and I’m excited to see more about how people are using this media to explore and expand our awareness, specifically focused on hydrology. Any ideas in that realm, please feel free to comment.

HEADER: Franz Max Osswald, contact print of sound photographs in architectural models, from Osswald’s applied acoustics laboratory at ETH Zurich, 1930–33 – taken from “A Visual Imprint of Moving Air – Methods, Modles, and Media in Architectural Sound Photography, ca. 1930 – Sabine von Fischer

04 February 2018

Playing with Water

Jason Kingart, cultural, landscape, parks, photography, places, projects, riversLeave a Comment

I tweeted a bit back that I’m reading the book Rivers Lost, Rivers Regained: Rethinking City-River Relations, and so far it hasn’t disappointed. More info for sure on some of the great content on cities and rivers forthcoming. However, an intriguing concept mentioned in the intro was the Japanese concept of shin-sui, which the authors loosely define as “playing with water”. They mention these in an overall trend of cities refocusing on their urban rivers, and specifically of ways to encourage people reconnecting with these urban waterways. The authors bring up urban waterfront parks, and mention these “shin-sui” parks as a way of connecting with natural processes:

” “Although these projects were conducted for recreational rather than ecological purposes, they helped to turn people’s eyes back to nature.” (18)

Translation being a tricky thing, there’s multiple meanings that emerge when one starts digging into the concept of shinsui (and someone with a grasp of Japanese beyond my total lack thereof please correct me). Online definitions, include water references, summarily – flood, fuel & water, inundation, as well as having meanings for adoration, cooking, salary.

Another reference in a book that popped up in a Google search, Japan for Kids, has a great way of describing the parks a friendship: “A new concept in neighborhood playground is a ‘shinsui park.’ Shinsui means literally ‘to be friendly with water.’ A shinsui park is one with plenty of water attractions that provide children with a chance to get use to water by playing in it.” (127)

The designs for these transcend the mere “splash play” or water park, but do share some of the same elements of interactivity and immersion. Owing to the diversity of density of Japanese cities, they are often narrow, but it does show the potential for even abstracted water courses to co-exist with urbanization.

Otonashi Shinshi Park is one of these very urban examples, located in the northern area of Tokyo and literally wedged in a channel between development. You get a feel for the scale and elements, in this case a high-walled channel that opens up to some more interactive and tactile elements.

A little more lush version from photographer Andy Serrano is found at Oyokogawa Shinsui Park, which he describes: “The park runs alongside the Oyoko-gawa River in the Sumida Ward of Tokyo, and is a popular place for local residents who play, walk, fish, and even swim there. With the Tokyo Sky Tree looming nearby, cherry blossom season gives visitors a taste of Japan’s dual natures: historic traditions side-by-side with ultra-modernity, natural beauty next to futuristic technology and architecture.”

The Tanada Shinsui Park on the Houzuyamma River in the village of Toho in Fuuses some vernacular elements to create a “River pool…for the infant and elementary school children [and the] …”Koinobori pool” river pool is a pool that uses the difference in height of the rice terraces.”

Another urban example is sculptural pools of the Arima River Shinsui Park near Kobe, Japan, which is located near Arima Onsen, one of the oldest hot springs locations in the country.

As mentioned, these few examples I’ve show are not about restoration, and vary from just parks by the river to ones with active recreation elements focused on water. While natural edges occur, many are somewhat channellized, highly designed and very abstracted river environments — akin the art-side of the conceptual continuum of restoration. The goal here is more recreational, but, as the editors of Rivers Lost mention, they may provide a powerful precedent for engaging people of all ages with their natural waterways, and informing urban residents on the natural processes

HEADER: Otonashi Shinsui Park – Tokyo, via Japan by Web

27 January 2018

Mysteries in the Depths of Seattle

Jason Kingcity, cultural, history, lakes, landscape, lidar, maps, places, seattle1 Comment

As I alluded to in the previous post on smaller lakes, the large Seattle lakes provide the form and contribute to the overall sense of place. River cities are shaped differently than coastal and lake cities, and the relationship with water differs due to this morphology. In either case, any urban waterway will exist in balance with many factors of urbanization, industrialization, influencing the ecological and social connections between hydrological and other systems.

In addition, because these larger water bodies exist in tandem with anthropocentric activities, they accumulate a mix of the odd and off-beat. And while I was excited about the idea of “Searching for the Mystery Sharks of Seattle”, those particular mysteries ended up a bit further outside the realm of our local water bodies. However, in Seattle, there is still evidence of some strange things in both Lake Washington and Lake Union, worth a bit of exploration.

LAKE UNION

Starting with Lake Union, which seems to have a bit less info, this article from Seattle Magazine from 2013, “Unlocking Lake Union’s waterlogged secrets — one sunken treasure at a time” is a good overview of some of the exploration.

One endeavor is the Center for Wooden Boats and their Underwater Archeology Project, starting in 2008. A good overview of this is the form of a post from 2011 by Dick Wagner “Beneath the Waters” recounts some of the finds, including a range of boats from back into the 1880s, as well as cars, motorcycles and even a Vespa scooter.

A video ‘Shipwrecks of Lake Union: Seattle’s Hidden History” the explorations from 2012: “This short video documents the Lake Union underwater archaeology project that The Center for Wooden Boats Founding Director Dick Wagner has been helping lead for the last several years. CWB is working with the UW’s Burke Museum, The State Department of Ecology, and others to locate and document vessels and other historic artifacts. Using the latest in underwater technology, divers and amateur archaeologists have been scouring the 40-foot-deep lake, looking at more spots where sunken vessels lie.”

The Lake Union Virtual Museum also has a nice map of a few of the wrecks on their site, clickable with some photos of some of the 100s of wrecks in the lakes (go to the link to interact)

The wreck of the J.E. Boyden, which is one of the finds of the Underwater Archaeology Project above, is located in the south part of the lake, “One of the oldest and best documented wrecks in Lake Union, the J.E. Boyden was built in 1888 and has been on the lake bottom since 1935.”

The Global Underwater Explorers Seattle group, which educates divers. From their site: “our exploration projects will have the ultimate goal of gathering consistent observational data and documenting the degradation or appreciation of our submerged resources over time. Through data analysis, we aim to drive policy-changing efforts to conserve, protect and create public awareness for our submerged resources” They also maintain Project Baseline, which is an interactive online map which displays bathymetry of Lake Union and Washington, with documentation of these wrecks as well as unknown and unexplored underway element. The Lake Union area in whole, which also shows the lake to be quite shallow, maxing out at about 40 feet at the deepest points.

A zoom in on the south section offers some interesting underwater topography, and the information about the Boyden, with a pop-up of info. Go to the map and check it out and you can see the distinct shape of the boat on the surface.

There’s definitely some novelty to the concept of shipwrecks, and the information appeals to a certain geeky longing that seems visceral to the water. As summed in the Seattle Magazine article there’s more to it that that:

“The effort to record these old wrecks is not simply a matter for scuba heads or boat geeks. Lake Union is the heart of Seattle’s maritime origins; filling in the story of its transformation from a pristine natural lake to a center for industry (including sawmills, brick making and boatbuilding) to a recreation hub through photos and film is of tremendous value.”

LAKE WASHINGTON

As for Lake Washington, the significantly larger water body, it doesn’t take much digging to uncover a range of good stories and mysteries. A 2014 KUOW Story is a good starting point: “What’s On The Botton of Lake Washington? Planes, Trains And…” hints at the diversity of subsurface elements, including planes “ Lake Washington is like a treasure trove for old plane wrecks. There are at least seven at the bottom of the Lake. They’re a frozen piece of our wartime history, a time when mock air battles raged over these waters. Midair collisions would send airplanes crashing into the lake.”

SHIPS

One there’s no shortage of, much like Lake Union, are ships, many of them either lost in accidents, or purposely scuttled. Per the KUOW story, “…there are about 400 boats beneath the surface: ferries, barges, three Navy minesweepers, mostly in the shallower waters off Kirkland, where the Lake Washington Shipyards used to be. Now, it’s a graveyard for wrecked boats. “These are full-on, full-sized ferries on the bottom, right underneath all the yachts that are parked there now,” said diver Ben Griner, also aboard. As for the minesweepers, one day they were docked, the next they were gone.”

For as long as there’s been water and something staring into its depths, there’s been the desire to dive in and see what’s underneath. Overlapping with the Global Underwater Explorers (GUE Seattle), is the Maritime Documentation Society, (link is to Facebook, as their original link is bad) is one of those groups that do this on a regular basis, with a mission. From their page, it is focused on “exploration and documentation of existing, undiscovered, and natural historic shipwrecks. Our goal is to create public awareness and expand the wealth of history for present and future generations.”

Some good videos are also found via DCS Films, which is ‘Dedicated to Advanced Technical Diving and Underwater Cinematography’ is a good resource to see what its like submarine, and they have some info on Lake Washington Relics. A clip from a story from “KCPQ 13 on the artifacts of Lake Washington A joint effort of the Maritime Documentation Society, DCS Films, and GUE Seattle” offers a bit of the footage.

Similarly the afforementioned GUE-Seattle has some great info about explorations on their blog, along with the maps shown before. Some of the stories of the dives are a fun read, to understand that equipped with a bit of info such as a general location and some scans, the fun is in exploration. One such as this exploration of LW250, an unknown object, seen here in the bathymetric view.

And the interesting perspective of the side sonar imagery, seen below.

From the post: “We found a well-preserved wooden sailboat in good condition and it was a pleasure exploring it. As is true with most fish stories and dive stories, this was the most spectacular boat even found. It had a hole in the deck with treasures of very old bottles, ledgers of misplaced bank funds, police ID badges, a revolver, and an attaché case chained to the railing…..actually it had none of that, but it was as exciting as if it did. Just to be there on this boat that no one had ever seen was thrilling. The boat actually had a Washington state registration number and the last year sticker on the side was 1983.”

A snip of the GUE-Seattle Bathymetry shows part of the Lake (it’s a really big lake) showing a range of underwater explorations, and also the relative depths, as you see see beyond the east side tidal zones, the edge of Lake washington falls off sharply from the Seattle shoreline (on the left side of the map).

And while the shipwrecks are cool, I’m really fascinated with the bathymetric info as an interesting exploration of hidden hydrology that goes beyond creeks and rivers – especially as there was so much manipulation of the Lake levels amidst the re-plumbining of the entire region, this information provides some great clues to a history unique to a lake-shaped city.

AN UNDERWATER FOREST

My interest in this topic in general was piqued by the May 2011 KUOW story “The spooky, underwater forests of Lake Washington and Lake Sammamish”, which describes 1000 year old forests off the edges of areas of both lakes. Remnants of an 1100 year old seismic event, areas of these forests were discovered The caption helps explain this image : ” This image is a close up of the standing timber on the south end of Mercer Island. The image is generated using a side scan sonar towed behind a boat about 20 feet off the bottom. The trees are visible mostly from the shadows they cast.

There was a video I do recall seeing, but all the links now seem to be gone. It was bit disorienting, so aside from a glimpse of something tree-like, it was alot of darkness and blurriness, which makes one thin. Ben Griner of Coastal Sensing who explored the Lake via sonar and underwater is, quoted in the story “…describes the drowned trees off the southern coast of Mercer Island as a thrill to swim through (although he gets not everyone would see it that way). “It’s certainly a disorienting dive,” he said. “A lot of people call it really freaky. Other people describe it as exciting and interesting.” The lake is pitch black at that depth — and being underwater can mess with one’s sense of movement. Griner said it’s sometimes difficult to tell if the water is moving or he is, and divers often bump into things. “Because of how long the forest has been under water and how busy the lake is, most trees are just the trunks now,” he said. “It can be a little creepy, but it’s really fun to swim through the trees.”

From the Wikipedia page, the location of the underwater forests are located in yellow, adjacent to Mercer Island to the south, and another segment. Per the page, the earthquake from around 900 C.E. created “The landslides on heavily wooded land created “bizarre submerged forests” of old-growth timber, preserved by the cool water and low oxygen in the deep lake.^[1]^[5] These sunken forests were known to early European settlers of the Seattle area, for whom the snags could be a hazard to ships on the lake, and as early as 1919, nearly 200 of the sunken trees had been removed from depths of 65–132 feet (20–40 m)”

David Williams, who does his usual engagingly thorough job of discussing this topic back in 2014 on a post “What Lies Beneath – the Secrets of Lake Washington” discusses ships, and these Submerged Forests as well, explaining a chapter in the story (also mentioned in the KUOW story).

“Mostly forgotten, the trees merited public attention in the 1990s. In 1994, John Tortorelli was caught salvaging wood from the submerged forests. Unfortunately for him the state Department of Natural Resources owns the trees, plus he damaged an underwater sewer line. Found guilty of three counts of theft and three of trafficking in stolen property, Tortorelli received a jail term of three and a half years”

The post includes this map, highlighting the locations of the souther sections identified above.

COAL CAR ENDNOTE

As many discussed the other submerged worlds of ships and forests, both the KUOW article and David Williams mention coal cars on the bottom of the Lake as well. Williams elaborates on the the eastside coal connection, which saw a constant stream of “… coal was loaded on railroad cars at Newcastle and lowered 900 feet by tram to Lake Washington, where the cars traveled on a barge to Union Bay and then on a tram over the narrow neck of land now crossed by SR-520. A second barge carried the coal cars across Lake Union to a train (Seattle’s first) that carried the coal its final mile to a final tram, which lowered the ore down to a massive coal bunker at the base of Pike Street. It was on one of these trips across Lake Washington that the barge dropped its load of coal cars now sitting at the bottom of the lake.”

With that frequency, the accident was bound to happen. To verify this concept, a cool shot from Coastal Sensing shows the scattered remains of perhaps these same “Coal Cars in Lake Washington Seattle. Lost in a storm while transporting coal from Coal Creek to the small city of Seattle.” (read more about this here).

HEADER: Lake Union and Lake Washington Bathymetry – via GUE-Seattle Project Baseline Map

16 January 2018

As January is quick turning into London month, we’re wrapped up on the summaries of available books on the subject, including works by Barton, Myers, Bolton, Talling, and Fathers, running a gamut of approaches to walking, studying, and mapping Lost Rivers. I’d also be remiss if I failed to call back a 2016 post on another take on the subject, Iain Sinclair’s 2013 book ‘Swimming to Heaven: London’s Lost Rivers‘ which rounds out my collection on the subject. The amazing amount of hidden hydrology literature provides a solid foundation, however, it is merely the ~~tip of a massive iceberg~~ visible layer of a vast and sprawling underground complex of content, and a starting point for discussing many of the other resources and discussion around the subject, including art, history, exploration, and maps.

A quick search of London and Lost Rivers or something along those lines yields plenty of material, including additional resource from the sources as diverse as London Geezer, which contains an extensive amount of information, to city specific hidden hydrology projects such as the Lost Rivers Project in Camden. A lot of ink (at least digitally) has been spent on this topic, with articles from BT like “8 of London’s lost rivers you probably didn’t know about” to BBC “The lost rivers that lie beneath London?“, the Telegraph (authored by none other than Tom Bolton, “The fascinating history of London’s lost rivers“, and perhaps the most prolific, the Londonist which covers this topic often, with titles like “The Secrets of London’s Lost Rivers” and info on specific rivers like “Counter’s Creek: In Search of London’s Unknown River” (authored by David Fathers) to a multi-part “Lost Rivers from Above: The Tyburn“.

Without going into extravagant detail and barrage you with too many links (there are over 100 I have at this point), it’s safe to say that London is by far the city with the most coverage, and it continues to emerge (such as this interactive virtual reality tour on the Guardian of London Sewers), showing that it’s a topic that continues to intrigue people. For now, we’ll focus on some projects that work directly in the realm of these lost rivers, interpreting them directly through exploration and indirectly through art.

ART/EXPLORATIONS

Much of the interpretive work around hidden hydrology comes from art, in it’s various forms, and much of the art includes exploration, so I’m combining these two ideas in one here. We’ve previously featured artist Cristina Iglesias and her new installation Forgotten Streams in London as more of a site specific example, interpreting the Walbrook in water features outside of the new Bloomberg London HQ.

A spatial approach comes from Sandra Crisp, and her video project from 2010-2012 “Mapping London’s Subterranean Rivers”. This work was “originally made as a site-specific installation for a group exhibition 2010 held in the semi derelict basement under Shoreditch Town Hall, London” A soundtrack was added later and you can check out the full video at the link above.

A short blurb (with my one small edit) from the site: “The film allows the viewer to fly through a 3D map of London, revealing the sites of ancient and subterranean rivers based on research using old maps and books such as ~~Nigel~~ Nicholas Barton’s ‘The Lost rivers of London’. Evoking existing and long disappeared waterways that bubble unseen beneath our feet. Including; The Fleet, Tyburn, Westbourne, Quaggy, Counters Creek, Neckinger and more…..”

A detail shows the intricacy of the layering, in this case highlighting the River Wandle – but the stills don’t do it justice – check out the video for full effect.

Crisp also breaks down the research on the piece, where she shows a hybrid version of Barton’s map that was the basis for the piece, along with some of the ‘making-of’ info that’s pretty interesting.

Amy Sharrocks, a London based artist, sculptor and film-maker, created “London is A River City” from 2009. As she mentions in her bio “For the last four years I have been making work about Londoners and our relationship to water, inviting people to swim across the city with me, floating boats to drift on swimming pools, lake and rivers, tying people together to trace lost rivers and re-create a memory of water.”

The project included walks of lost rivers, which involved using dowsing as a methodology for walks of the Westbourne, Tyburn, Effra, Fleet, Walbrook, and Neckinger rivers. Each of these are beautifully documented (with PDFs as well for download), and worth exploring in more detail. Per her statement “Why I’m Doing it?“, she mentions:

“Tracing these rivers has been a process of layering: new stories over old, our footsteps over others, roads and railways over rivers. Uncovering a past of London I knew nothing about. Connecting to things submerged beneath our streets has uncovered a currency of the city, and enabled a kind of palm reading of London.

The idea of walking is vital to this endeavor, coupled with the dowsing gives it a pyschogeographic slant. From her site: “These rivers lost their claim to space in this city, long ago paved over, with their inconvenient tides and smells, to make way for faster roads and railways. These river walks have championed a human speed, that stumbles, stops to look at things, slows down when it is tired. There is a connection to the speed of water, a meandering dérive to battle the rising pace of modern life. We took the measure of London by our own strides, pacing out the city at our own speed.” Flash-enabled website headaches aside, it’s a good project worth some time to dive in. Read some coverage from the Independent on the Walbrook walk. You can see more about some other work as well at SWIM .

Another project, this time with a poetic bent, comes from via ADRIFT, a project by poet Tom Chivers envisioned as a “…personal interrogation of climate through poetry.”, where he “sets out to explore climate as culture, mapping out the territory of climate science within urban space.” The site has the full list of writings, and a nice archive of some related materials are also on the site. It’s a project of Cape Farewell, which has a great mission of “bringing creatives, scientists and informers together to stimulate a cultural narrative that will engage and inspire a sustainable and vibrant future society”, namely climate change. An image from the ADRIFT site as part of a photoset “Walking the Neckinger: Waterloo to Bermondsey”

A graphic design work Hidden Rivers of London by Geertje Debets takes a different, more visual approach, as “A research on the letterpress technique, while developing the concept and design for the visualisation of the underground rivers of London. London’s terrifying under half… Sometimes you can catch a glimpse of this underground life, but when you look better, you find the underground world everywhere, especially the underground rivers. The names of the underground rivers are used in street names, places, houses, companies, schools and orchestras. The locations of these places show you how the river floats.”

The work of Stephen Walter got a bunch of press a few years back, with this map of London that “…traces the lesser known streams, sewers, springs and culverts of the capital in intense, hand-drawn detail.” Some enlargements of these maps, via the Guardian:

Another of Walter’s work that is worth seeing is the 2012 “London Subterranea“, which “…aims to shine a light on this clandestine infrastructure and it presents perhaps the first comprehensive map, open to the public, which places so many of its features alongside each other. It geographically tracks the routes of London’s Lost Rivers, its main sewers, the tube network and it’s ‘ghost’ stations including the Crossrail project. It also pinpoints archeological finds, ruins, known plague pits, secret governmental tunnels, the Mail Rail and the Water Ring Main tunnels. Epithets to the ‘underworld’ of crime, and the scenes of notable killings such as the acid-bath murders get a look in. So too does the site of the infamous Tyburn Tree and its many buried corpses that still lie in its wake undiscovered.”

On the topic of the subterranean, photography as well plays a part, with many of the London area rivers featured in a National Geographic photo-essay, “11 Rivers Forced Underground“. A book on the subject I’d like to pick up, Subterranean London: Cracking the Capitol (2014), is described via a blurb from Amazon: “Bradley L. Garrett has worked with explorers of subterranean London to collect an astonishing array of images documenting forbidden infiltrations into the secret bowels of the city. This book takes readers through progressively deeper levels of historical London architecture below the streets. Beautifully designed to allow for detailed viewing and featuring bespoke map illustrations by artist Stephen Walter, this unique book takes readers to locations few dare to go, and even fewer succeed in accessing.”

The publication had some acclaim, with one of the images winning an architectural photography award, along with some controversy as noted in the CityLab article “The Photography Book London Officials Never Wanted You to See” which outlines some of the sticky issues of urban exploration, access, liability, and such. Content addresses more than just hidden waters, but does include some amazing photographs as seen below.

This resource on London sewers from 2011 that looks to no longer be actively maintained, is ‘Sub-Urban: Main Drainage of the Metropolis‘ which looks at the drainage via sewer exploration and photography: “Alongside more traditional study and research practices, such as access to archival materials and the use of other historic and literary resources, we apportion equal importance to the hands on scrutiny of our subject matter. Taking time to explore, investigate and photograph London’s sewers affords us a greater understanding of the often complex architecture and gives practical insight and knowledge that cannot be gained from any amount of time spent thumbing through books and documents.” There’s a number of links on the site to other endeavors, as well as some great imagery, both current of their explorations, and some historical work, along with the timeless phrasing of the section “Close Encounters of the Turd Kind“.

And when you’re done exploring, you can always grab a pint at Lost Rivers Brewing Company and drink the range of available beers inspired by the rivers themselves, and perhaps peruse Ben Aaronovitch’s 2011 book “Rivers of London“, where he created a story around various water deities and river spirits on the Thames and areas of London.

HISTORY

The concept of hidden hydrology is intertwined with history, so threads weave through all of these art installations and explorations. The history of the development of London is fascinating and overwhelming, but there are some great resources like British History Online, which has resources on the topic like the six volume “Old and New London” written in the late 19th century, to sites like Connected Histories, which provide timeline based search tools, or links from the London Historians’ Blog.

On the topic of Lost Rivers, the history of the Big Stink is pretty key historical moment, which was a vital impetus behind what became the modern sewage system and led to the demise of many urban rivers. The idea of this also led to “a piece of Victorian science fiction considered to be the first modern tale of urban apocalypse”, William Delisle Hay’s 1880 novel “The Doom of the Great City”, which is covered in depth via this article in the Public Domain Review.

You can also access primary sources, such as following along with Sir Richard Phillips as he explored the edges of London in 1817, in “A Morning’s Walk from London to Kew“.

Some visual history comes via ArchPaper “What a difference 400 years makes: Modern and medieval London contrasted in hand-drawn cityscapes” which takes historic drawing viewpoints and redraws them showing the current urban configuration.

A fascinating thread that came from some of the books was the legacy of Spas, Springs, and Wells that have been a long part of the history of London. There are some good sites to engage with this history, such as London’s Holy Wells, or the resource Holy and Healing Wells, highlighting around around the globe, including London. There’s some great documentation such as the book mentioned by Barton, Foord’s “Springs, streams and spas of London: history and associations” from 1910, and one mentioned to me by David Fathers, Sunderland’s “Old London’s spas, baths, and wells” from 1915, both great resources for hidden hydrology. An illustration from Foord, showing a 1733 engraving of one of these places, Tunbridge Wells:

The history of the Thames River Postman is a bit more random but worth a read, outlining H.L. Evans who delivered mail along the Thames. “The Thames Postmen played an important role connecting people who lived on the river with the rest of the world. They also became something of a local celebrity being a constant in the fast changing landscape of the river. Considering that the job was not without its dangers, it was remarkable that the Evans dynasty managed to continue for over a century.”

A visual resource COLLAGE, is an image database of over 250,000 images from The London Metropolitan Archives and the Guildhall Art Gallery, and also includes a picture map so you can locate them spatially in London. A quick perusal found me in the Serpentine in Hyde Park, which showed this 1795 “View of Cheesecake House, Hyde Park.”

The concept of the larger regional picture is the website Vision of Britain over time, which is full of great information, and specific to the landscape is the book ‘Hidden Histories: A Spotter’s Guide to the British Landscape‘ by Mary-Ann Ochota which helps decipher the immensity of history through interpreting landforms and other traces. From a review in Geographical:

“There is so much history to the British landscape. What with its stone circles, hill forts, mines and umpteenth century cottages, the land is marked with centuries of use. This can make it hard to read, like a blackboard written on hundreds of times and never erased”

As you can see, plenty of great work has happened and is still happening in London. This is not an attempt to be comprehensive, and there’s tons more out there on specific rivers and locations, so consider this a teaser of sorts and google away for more. I’m trying to find a simple way to share the mass of my resources and links online for further reading and reference, so stay tuned there, and future posts will likely expand on this rich history around hidden hydrology. As a last reference to London, the last post in the series for now, following the lead of New York City, will be on maps.

HEADER: Hand drawn map of the Rivers of London by Stephen Walter.

12 January 2018

London: Illustrating ‘London’s Hidden Rivers’ with David Fathers

Jason Kingart, city, creeks, cultural, explorations, history, infrastructure, lakes, language, london, maps, places, rivers, streamsLeave a Comment

Jumping forward a bit, the most recent of the books on London from June 2017 is another slim, exploratory volume, London’s Hidden Rivers by David Fathers. Dubbed as “A walkers guide to the subterranean waterways of London’, this small book is extensive in scope and graphics. From Amazon: “David Fathers traces the course of twelve hidden rivers in a series of detailed guided walks, illustrating the traces they have left and showing the ways they have shaped the city. Each walk starts at the tube or rail station nearest to the source of the river, and then follows it down to the Thames through parkland, suburbia, historic neighbourhoods and the vestiges of our industrial past. Along the way there are encounters with such extraordinary Londoners as William Blake, Judy Garland, Paul Robeson, Terence Donovan, Bradley Wiggins, Nelson, Lenin, Freud, and the great Victorian engineer Joseph Bazalgette. Hidden Rivers of London contains over 120 km of walks, both north and south of the Thames. Winding through the hills, valleys and marshes that underlie the city, every page is a revelation.”

Fathers is an illustrator and map-maker, with a strong focus on walkiing guides, so this is in line with the other tour-specific guides, however, he visual and exploratory nature is inventive and really works with large, illustrated spreads (even in a small book), that highlight key points, while remaining focused on the route and the relation to the former waterway. Text fills these empty spaces, in Fathers’ distinctive style.

There’s also a story beyond the story, not trying to get too much technical knowledge, but looking more at storytelling, for instance the Serpentine in Hyde Park, part of the route of the River Westbourne. Some snippets of history, along with significant modern features, make for an interest mix.

I had seen snippets of his other books on the The London Thames Path and The Regents Canal, and really enjoyed encountering his work for the first time from this Londonist post, “The Lost London River With A Musical History“, which recounted one of the stories that eventually made it to the book, that of the River Westbourne, which “…like so many London streams over the past few hundred years, has been press-ganged by the demands of hygiene into becoming a sewer, and buried for the needs of ever more living space. And yet despite all this, the stream alone seems to have a mysterious, magnetic quality of attracting musicians to its banks.” He recounts the experiences of a number of musical talents over history that were related to the hidden river, including below, where Judy Garland lived in 1969 (Site E) and Site G, which was the “site of the former Ranelagh Pleasure Gardens where a young Mozart gave a musical performance in 1764”

A review from the Londonist mentions: “Each river is mapped in some detail, allowing the walker to follow closely, looking for clues: here a sloping side-road, there a gushing drain. The real joys are the little puddles of trivia that accompany each walk. Who knew that Lenin often frequented a fish and chip shop in the River Fleet valley? Or that Van Gogh fell in love on the banks of the Effra?” Fathers had written often for the Londonist on the subject, with some great weekend walks along the routes of the Wandle, Lea, and Ravensbourne, with the expected maps and sketches, such as this from Ravensbourne.

You can follow him on Twitter @TheTilbury, and he’s also got some great info on all the books on his website, as well as this poster of the Thames, which “This full colour, illustrated poster, is packed with information about the architecture, bridges and monuments that line the banks of the River Thames as it flows through the capital city from Putney to Tower Bridge.”

Hidden Hydrology

Category: cultural

Restoring Ancient Rivers