Croton Gorge – A view from on top of the dam

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Taken from the top of the Croton Dam, looking down onto the spillway. You can clearly see its dual nature: part natural, part man made. On the left the water rushes through the natural part, and on the right it flows over the man made part.

As an article on the Amusing Planet website states:

The dam features an unusual stepped spillway, located to the side of the retaining wall and is partly natural and partly man-made. Water flows down the natural portion in wild waterfall-like rapids, while at the man-made portion water spills down huge steps.

Croton Gorge – Metal door

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Again I’ve walked along the top of the Croton Dam many times, but until today I’d never noticed this door. Maybe, like the gravestone in an early post, it had been in the shade during previous visits and I hadn’t notice it. Today there was enough light reflecting back off the surface for me to notice it.

I was impressed by how solid it looked: the heavy looking stone surround, and the large number of screws/rivets. I also liked the contrast between the smooth, shiny surface and the rougher textures of the stone, and the flecks of rust.

Croton Gorge – Why do they do this?

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We’d walked some distance along the Old Croton Aqueduct (OCA) trail and decided to turn around and head back, this time staying on the OCA rather than taking the River Trail as we had going out. Soon afterwards I noticed the above on one of the rocks.

We continued down towards one of the periodic ventilators that you come across on the OCA and I thought to myself I’ll find some more graffiti on it and, sure enough, there was a lot:

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On one of the buildings on the top of the dam I came across this:

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I wonder why people feel the need to do this. I can understand that you might might be driving through some piece of urban blight and decided to stop, get out the can of spray paint and make your mark. But the OCA is little bit out of the way. You’d have to take the paint can with you, thinking I suppose that you might come across somewhere to spray it. Or maybe these people just carry a can with them at all times “just in case”.

Maybe they do it to express themselves artistically and I must say that I’ve seen some very impressive graffiti, obviously done by people with artistic talent. But this…it has no artistic merit. If the people doing envision themselves as future artists then they have a long way to go.

There is so much natural beauty in the Hudson Valley that it’s a shame that these morons feel the need to deface it. Why don’t they just go to one of the many decaying towns, find a wall somewhere and express themselves there. It would probably make the place look a bit brighter and in any case would most likely disappear when the building is torn down.

Apparently graffiti in the natural environment has increasingly become a problem. See this April, 2015 article in the LA Times: Graffiti artists’ move to national parks shocks nature community

Croton Gorge – Red Door

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I’ve always had an affinity for red doors but it this case it wasn’t just the the bright red color of the door that caught my attention, but also the variations in both texture and color in the stones in the wall and the pavers on the ground. I also found the metalwork appealing. The way the horizontal and vertical cross pieces intertwine in the manner of a lattice; the amazing upper hinge mimics the curve of the rounded top of the door as it curves practically all the way across the door. Lovely!

Croton Gorge – Serendipity

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When I embarked upon this walk in Croton Gorge I didn’t have high expectations. I’d been there many times and thought that I must already have come across everything of interest. However, one of the great things about photography is that no matter how many times you’ve visited a place there’s always something new. It might be detail you’ve missed, or a different viewpoint on something you’ve already seen, maybe different light makes something familiar feel new. Or it might just be something that was there in plain sight and you just missed it.

This post provides an example of the final point above. Anyone who reads this blog (if indeed anyone does) will know that I’m fascinated by cemeteries. I’d been along this trail many times and had never noticed this solitary grave stone by the side of the house. I didn’t see any other markers, and I’m not sure if anyone is actually buried here, or whether it’s a cenotaph (i.e. a memorial for people who are actually buried elsewhere). I suspect that missed this in the past because it was in shade and less noticeable. This time the sun was reflecting of the polished surface of the gravestone. You could hardly miss it.

I searched the internet to try to find additional information about the family and came across an obituary in the New York Times for Egon H. Ottinger dated October 1992. It reads:

Egon H. Ottinger; Insurer, 93

Egon H. Ottinger, a former chairman of Frank B. Hall & Company, a leading marine insurance company, died on Monday at Phelps Memorial Hospital in North Tarrytown, N.Y. He was 93 years old and lived in Croton-on-Hudson, N.Y.

Mr. Ottinger died of complications from a recent fall, said Carolyn B. Handler, a family spokeswoman.

A native of Newport, R.I., Mr. Ottinger devoted his career to the marine insurance industry. He began at 16 as a clerk and by 1919 was writing marine cargo contracts for the Hall concern, which is now a division of the Aon Corporation.

He became a vice president there in 1935, a director in 1940 and president in 1961. He was the company’s chairman from 1964 to his retirement in 1969.

His wife, the former Lilyan Leaders, died in 1983. There are no immediate survivors.

As noted in the obituary Frank B. Hall company is now a division of Aon Corporation. In the 1980s the Hall company seems to have gone through troubled times as noted in a piece in the New York Times (See: Frank B. Hall) dated May 28 1986. This same article mentions that the company was based in Briarcliff Manor, NY co-incidentally somewhere we have lived for the past almost 20 years.