Cycling the Hudson Valley - Carmel to Brooklyn (Days 4 and 5)

 

Day 4 (Aug. 8, 2025), Carmel to Ardsley-on-Hudson

 

Early on Day 4, the terrain was still rural south of the small town of Carmel. But after we crossed the New Croton Reservoir, you could tell we had entered more dense suburban infrastructure. The North County Trailway still passed through woods but soon entered suburbia. We turned off the trail and stayed in Mercy College in Ardsley-on-Hudson. I took the comfort option and stayed in a dorm room (with private bath and air conditioning!).

 

Trailside memorial, Ardsley

Waiting for a restoration, El Camino, Ardsley

Ardsley Acres Hotel Court, 560 Saw Mill River Rd, Ardsley

 

Day 5, Mercy College to Manhattan 

 

Day 5 was an abrupt cultural and scenic change. The terrain was suburban along the South County Trailway in Mount Hope and Yonkers. We biked through Van Courtland Park in the Bronx, and abruptly, we were in the city. 

Our first rest break was at Tread Bike Shop on Dyckman Street in New York. They were very nice to us, did minor repairs as needed, and provided restrooms, munchies, and cold water.

 

Cooling off at Tread Bike Shop

Checking the scene, Dyckman Street

From Tread, we biked west to the Hudson river and turned south on the Fort Washington Park Greenway. There were crowds everywhere. People on the trails were using bicycles, unicycles, tricycles, scooters, roller cross-country skis, and electronic devices. 

 

George Washington Bridge (opened 1931)

Battery Park at the south end of Manhattan was a madhouse with thousands of tourists on the paths and walkways. We worked our way round the tip and up though some local streets to access the Brooklyn Bridge Bicycle Path. 

FDR Drive, Manhattan

Serious joggers, FDR Drive

Woolworth Building

World Trade Center from John Street

The Brooklyn Bridge Bicycle Path is on the road level but is separated from cars by a concrete barrier. It was narrow and fender to fender crowded. An occasional tourist lost battery power and stopped abruptly, causing spills and a real mess. No time to look around. But it was fun, and we made it across to our designated trip end point at Brooklyn Bridge Park.

 

Brooklyn Bridge from Cadman Plaza, Brooklyn

Loo with a view, East River, New York

This ends the Cycle the Hudson Valley 2025. Great fun! Fantastic weather with no rain. You can follow the day-to-day route on the ridewithgps link.

Thanks for riding along! 

 

Camera Note

 

I took most of the pictures on Kodak Portra 160 film with a Canon Canonet GIII QL17 fixed-lens rangefinder camera. The Canon 40mm ƒ/1.7 lens is contrasty. and high resolution. No complaints on the optical qualities of this modest camera.  

 Zack's Camera Repair in Providence, Rhode Island, overhauled the camera and repaired the battery contacts for the light meter. I used a Wein Cell, which provides the same 1.35 volts as the original mercury battery. 

 

The modest but top optical quality Canonet GIII QL17 camera

 

From the Archives: New York City in 1938

Envelopes containing negatives and contact prints, pre-1940

 

Dear Readers, you may remember that I recently experimented with film packs, in my case, GAF Versapan in 4×5" size. I had little experience with this format, but early in the 20th century, various size film packs were common. Before 1939 or 1940, my dad used film packs for all his photography. He bought his first roll film camera, a 35mm Perfex, in 1941 or 1942.

Envelope containing processed negatives from Block-Jones Co., Boston, Massachusetts

 

He stored his negatives in the envelopes that came back from the processing laboratory or drugstore and neatly filed them in an office box. I recently decided to recheck the negatives. Looking through the envelopes, I saw one labeled "New York Nov. 1938." These negatives were 2¼×3¼ inch size (close to the 6×9 that is common today). I think these were from a Certosport or Certotrop camera. I recall using it a few times around 1970, but cannot remember what lens was on it. My photographic results were quite unsatisfactory, and the unit suffered from light leaks. Back then, you could still buy the small pack film. These 1938 sheets are all nitrate film stock.

Queen Mary SS Normandie with Ellis Island in distance, New York Harbor 

(scan of a toned contact print) 

Queen Mary SS Normandie and unknown dredge, New York Harbor

(scan of portion of 2¼×3¼" negative)

The Battery, Manhattan (scan of contact print)

The Battery, Manhattan, New York (scan of of 2¼×3¼" negative)

My dad and his friends took a boat trip, possibly one of the circle-Manhattan excursions that are still popular. He was lucky to see the Queen Mary Normandie heading out to sea. At that time, the Normandie was the peak of luxury, sophistication, and glamour for those with the funds to travel abroad. Only a year later, the start of the Second World War ended most Europe-bound tourism.

View towards Central Park from Rockefeller Center

View towards East River (?) from Rockefeller Center

View SW towards Empire State Building from Rockefeller center

This group of night photographs may be from The Top of the Rock at 30 Rockefeller Plaza. According to Wikipedia, 

30 Rockefeller Plaza is an American Art Deco skyscraper that forms the centerpiece of Rockefeller Center in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. Completed in 1933, it was designed by Raymond Hood, Rockefeller Center's lead architect. 30 Rockefeller Center was formerly called the RCA Building from its opening to 1988, and later the GE Building from 1988 to 2015. It was renamed the Comcast Building in 2015, following the transfer of ownership to new corporate owner Comcast, though its name is often shortened to 30 Rock. 

In 1938, this was a glamorous example of American architectural and engineering excellence.

Prometheus Statue (1934)

 

This is the famous Prometheus statue, by sculpture Paul Manship, located in the lower plaza at Rockefeller Center.  "Prometheus, teacher in every art, brought the fire that hath proved to mortals a means to mighty ends."

This ends our short 1938 tour. I will slowly look for more New York negatives as I go through the box.

Appendix

The Model A shown in the catalog from Burleigh Brooks may be my dad's  Certo camera, but I just cannot remember.

Update: A reader alerted me that the ocean liner in the photographs above was the Normandie. He was right. I compared there profiles of the Queen Mary and the Normandie, and the vessel in the photographs is the latter. 

From the archives: New York City in 1942

I recently looked through some family boxes of photographs and found a steel Kodak film can with tightly rolled film. It was a short roll of nitrate film, possibly untouched since it was developed in 1942. It recorded one of my dad's trips to Washington and New York City.

This is one of the Elevated (El) Lines, possibly the 2nd Avenue, somewhere in Lower Manhattan.

The monumental building with a statue on top is the Municipal Building at 1 Centre Street in Lower Manhattan. Built between 1907 and 1914, it houses City of New York offices. It may have been the inspiration for the Stalin-era Seven Sisters office buildings in Moscow. Warsaw also has one of these somber buildings, "donated" by Marshal Stalin to the supposedly-grateful people of occupied Poland. The tall building on the right is the Thurgood Marshall United States Courthouse at 40 Centre Street. It was originally known as the Foley Square Courthouse but was renamed in 2001 to honor Mr. Marshall.

The elegant Art Deco Cities Service Building, now known as 70 Pine Street, is 67 stories or 952 feet tall. It was built in 1931-32 by the Cities Service Company (oil and gas).

George Washington presides over the monumental stairs at the US Treasury building. This is now the Federal Hall National Memorial at 26 Wall Street. General Washington took his first Oath of Office here, and the building at one time housed the Congress, Supreme Court, and executive offices of the United States government.

Trinity Church is at 75 Broadway and can be seen at the end of Wall Street. This is the third Trinity Church on the site. Construction began in 1839 and it was completed in 1846.

Slightly off the topic: this is Memorial Continental Hall, owned & operated by the Daughters of the American Revolution, in Washington, DC. The young lady is Bert. 

To the best of my knowledge, this roll of film dates to early 1942, but my dad's notes are incomplete. The camera was an American-made Perfex, from the Candid Camera Corporation of Chicago. It may have been equipped with a Wollensak lens. I scanned the Nitrate film frames with a Plustek 7600i 35mm film scanner using SilverFast Ai software. The negatives have scratches, but unfortunately the infrared iSRD function does not work with real black and white film. Consider, despite the flaws, there is still data on this film that can be extracted 64 years later. Will our digital files last that long? (Answer: dream away.)

This is a 1996 Kodachrome photograph of the Thurgood Marshall Courthouse.  I was on the roof of an office building occupied by the State of New York's Department of State at 270 Broadway. This file came from a Kodak Photo CD, which was an early attempt to provide a convenient way to show photographs on a television set. A film laboratory developed the film and then scanned the frames onto a CD. The user could insert the CD into a small player, somewhat like a VCR player. The scans technically should have been excellent, but my experience was mixed. Some contractors did distinctly mediocre work. Now, it is difficult to find a software package to open the proprietary Kodak format and correctly decode the colors.

New York and the World Trade Center: the Late Years and Destruction

This is the second of a two-part series on my memories of New York City and the World Trade Center.

Brooklyn Bridge pedestrian walkway

Right half of undated stereo card of Brooklyn Bridge, from
the Boston Public Library digital archives

After visiting New York in the early 1970s, ten years passed before I returned. I recall a snowy stop-over in 1982, but did not make it to lower Manhattan that time. A decade later, professional duties took me to the Big Apple three or four times per year. I really enjoyed these trips; the people were nice, food great, and there was always something interesting to see or do. On 1994, after a long, dull day of meetings, I decided to clear my brain and walk across the Brooklyn Bridge. It's a great walk on a brisk day, and the view is spectacular, but the ambiance is marred by the constant traffic directly below the walking deck. This first photograph shows the view looking west while walking from Brooklyn to Manhattan. The twin towers are off to the left (south) of the bridge axis.

The second photograph shows the view north, with the Empire State Building beyond the historic Manhattan Bridge (opened to traffic on December 31, 1909). I took these frames on Kodak Gold 100 film, which worked well on gloomy days and scans well.

In 1995, the family and I stayed in the Vista International Hotel at 3 World Trade Center. It was a 22-story steel-framed building, said to be the first hotel to open in Lower Manhattan since 1836 (is this possible?). It was badly damaged by the truck bomb that terrorists set off in the underground parking garage in 1993, but had been renovated and reopened. The hotel was convenient because you could pass through enclosed walkways into the lobbies of the north and south Trade Center towers. I recall one of the lobbies had a ticket office where you could buy half-price tickets for Broadway and off-Broadway productions. One evening, we went to the top floor of the hotel, and one of the stairways had an unlocked access door to the roof. The view of the south tower was awesome. It loomed up into the foggy night sky seemingly forever. Some employees were toiling away late in their offices. On September 11, the hotel was almost totally crushed, and 40 people lost their lives.

In 1997, I attended a meeting in a NY State Department of State office building at 212 Broadway. The meeting was on the top floor, and once again, an access door to the roof was unlocked. This was too good to resist and I took a panorama of the World Trade Center building using a 35 mm Olympus shift lens (in this case, shifting the lens vertically).

Panorama of four Rolleiflex exposures on 120-size film.

On April 29, 2001, I spent another day in meetings. It was a gorgeous clear day, and when I escaped, there were still two hours of daylight left. I had never been to the rooftop observation deck, and this was a perfect chance. Although being quite expensive, I recall thinking I might not have another opportunity. The Top of the World observation deck was on the 107th floor of 2 World Trade Center (the South Tower), and stairs went up to the open roof (open only on calm days). Amazingly, there was absolutely no wind that afternoon. Tourists from Germany and other countries were taking self-portraits with the spectacular view of Manhattan in the background (I confess, I took the obligatory dorky picture, too). The panorama looking north and east shows the north tower and Manhattan spread out across the horizon. The metal frame at the lower right is the rail system for the window-washing machines. The tourist gallery was set back, and you could not look down at a steep angle and see the streets immediately below. The panorama consists of four Rolleiflex (120-size film) frames merged together. Being a large film size, the original prints contain an astonishing amount of detail.

Card by Mayor Rudi Giuliana, from the Leica Gallery

Mayor Rudi Giuliani was a talented Leica photographer. I saw a sign at the Leica Gallery that the mayor always took his Leica with him when he made rounds around the city.

Federal Plaza from World Trade Center, April 29, 2001

Antennas and equipment on the roof of the North Tower, April 29, 2001

The view of Federal Plaza shows the amazing vista from the enclosed Top of the World observation level. The banal rectangle building in the center is the Jacob Javits Federal Building. The 1913-vintage Woolworth Building at 233 Broadway is in the lower right. The tall windowless red/brown edifice to the left is the former AT&T Long Lines Building. According to Wikipedia, it was designed to be self-sufficient and protected from nuclear fallout for up to two weeks after a nuclear blast. The East River is in the background.

Then the unimaginable happened. Five months after visiting the observation deck, the towers were destroyed. My coworkers and I watched television in our Vicksburg office transfixed as we saw the towers implode and throw up an immense dust cloud.

NASA photograph iss003e5388_232021.

This amazing NASA photograph from the International Space Station, taken by astronaut Frank Culberston, shows the dust plume rising into a clear sky (photograph iss003e5388_232021).

The next time I had business in New York was on December 19, 2001. Work crews had already cleared out an amazing amount of the rubble and twisted metal, but as the photographs show, some gutted buildings were still standing. I could not enter the demolition site, but the views past the truck entrances were horrifying. Two of my coworkers told me that was the first day they did not smell fumes and get irritated eyes from the underground fires. Before then, fumes were sucked into the ventilation system of the Jacob Javits Federal building, causing severe headaches for some workers.

This was the remains of the Winter Garden, across West Street from the Trade Center Plaza. It once housed beautiful palm trees.

Very moving were the impromptu memorials of flowers, notes, letters, and photographs of loved ones who had perished. Fortunately, none of my coworkers were hurt, but all knew someone or were connected via a friend or neighbor to someone who died.

MTA route map, December 2001

The December 2001 MTA route map shows how four subway stations were out of commission after the disaster. The WTC station was destroyed and had to be rebuilt.

I took the black and white photographs with Kodak BW400CN film using my 1949-vintage Leica IIIC camera with a 5 cm ƒ/3.5 Elmar lens. This was the post-war coated version of the famous Elmar lens, in production until the 1960s. This, as well as the later ƒ/2.8 version, are wonderful performers when adapted to Leica, Micro 4/3, or Fuji X digital cameras (and, of course, are best on film). My IIIC is still in regular use, but I sold the Elmar lens.

Updated August 15, 2014, with added photograph.
Updated October 2018: added MTA map.
Update March 12, 2020: Mr Michael Hertz, whose design studio created the iconic NY Transit Map, died on February 28, 2020.
Update July 12, 2020: Added early-1900s stereo card of the Brooklyn Bridge