Pearl Duncan: Google Goes Shopping for High-Tech Corridors Over/Under NY
[Pearl Duncan covered Newport-Bermuda Yacht Races, Miami-Montego Bay Yacht Races, Caribbean Ocean Racing Circuit (CORC) Races and others, for Sailing, Sail, and Yacht Racing/Cruising Magazines. Now she writes about historic New York and New Yorkers.]
...Google purchased a piece of gold in New York. It bought a building that sits on the high-tech corridor under New York’s streets. It bought a piece of New York’s historical high-tech highway, near the modern high speed, fast-trading stock brokerage firms and arbitrage companies on Wall Street. Like neighboring high-tech buildings, the solid concrete rooftops that once were the landing pads for helicopters now hold huge microwave and satellite dishes. Nearby residents are fried with microwaves. But one advantage is the buildings light up like a Christmas tree during blackouts in the city; I know. I no longer stock candles....
Google knew how the city’s residential and commercial interests coexisted and evolved together. Researching my ancestors, Thomas Smellie, a Scottish merchant, who was in New York in 1801, and Robert Hunter, a royal colonial governor of the colonial city, 1710 to 1720, and later, researching and writing a book-in-progress about the mystery of the 18th-century ship discovered at the World Trade Center ship, I stumbled on many tidbits about New York’s shipping, communications and commercial corridors, hundreds of years ago. In 1677 near the fort at Battery Park, there was a cattle market adjoining Trinity Churchyard on Broadway. In the 1700s merchants competed fiercely for the city’s permission to build covered markets near large mansions on Wall Street. In 1802, market women were first granted permission to erect awnings above their stalls. But these earlier signs of progress were baby’s play, financially, compared to what was ahead for high-speed, high-technology spaces....
What Google knew was that on July 30, 1851, the New York City Council, then called the Common Council, gave permission to the Eighth Avenue Railroad Company to “lay a double track from the intersection of West Broadway and Chambers Street; through West Broadway to Canal Street; down Canal to Hudson Street, and along Hudson Street and Eighth Avenue to the Harlem River.”
An advantage of researching the city is it gives us not only a view of the past, but hints of the future. More than a century and a half ago, New York also gave permission to the Sixth Avenue Railroad Company – “to lay a double track...commencing at the intersection of West Broadway and Chambers Street; thence through Chambers to Church Street; Church to Canal, Canal to Wooster, and Wooster to Fourth Street, with a single track; thence through Fourth St. to Sixth Avenue, and through Sixth Avenue to Harlem, with a double track; also to lay a single track in Thompson Street from Fulton to Canal Street, to connect with the Eighth Avenue Railroad. This route was slightly altered the following year.”
In 1858, the Ninth Avenue Railroad ran from Astor House Hotel at the Battery to 51st Street. New York’s Port Authority evolved from these companies, so its buildings are vital to transportation and communications networks.
The Port Authority and companies that already purchased its places own the colonial highway tracks that today’s high-tech communications companies will follow....
Read entire article at Nearsay NY
...Google purchased a piece of gold in New York. It bought a building that sits on the high-tech corridor under New York’s streets. It bought a piece of New York’s historical high-tech highway, near the modern high speed, fast-trading stock brokerage firms and arbitrage companies on Wall Street. Like neighboring high-tech buildings, the solid concrete rooftops that once were the landing pads for helicopters now hold huge microwave and satellite dishes. Nearby residents are fried with microwaves. But one advantage is the buildings light up like a Christmas tree during blackouts in the city; I know. I no longer stock candles....
Google knew how the city’s residential and commercial interests coexisted and evolved together. Researching my ancestors, Thomas Smellie, a Scottish merchant, who was in New York in 1801, and Robert Hunter, a royal colonial governor of the colonial city, 1710 to 1720, and later, researching and writing a book-in-progress about the mystery of the 18th-century ship discovered at the World Trade Center ship, I stumbled on many tidbits about New York’s shipping, communications and commercial corridors, hundreds of years ago. In 1677 near the fort at Battery Park, there was a cattle market adjoining Trinity Churchyard on Broadway. In the 1700s merchants competed fiercely for the city’s permission to build covered markets near large mansions on Wall Street. In 1802, market women were first granted permission to erect awnings above their stalls. But these earlier signs of progress were baby’s play, financially, compared to what was ahead for high-speed, high-technology spaces....
What Google knew was that on July 30, 1851, the New York City Council, then called the Common Council, gave permission to the Eighth Avenue Railroad Company to “lay a double track from the intersection of West Broadway and Chambers Street; through West Broadway to Canal Street; down Canal to Hudson Street, and along Hudson Street and Eighth Avenue to the Harlem River.”
An advantage of researching the city is it gives us not only a view of the past, but hints of the future. More than a century and a half ago, New York also gave permission to the Sixth Avenue Railroad Company – “to lay a double track...commencing at the intersection of West Broadway and Chambers Street; thence through Chambers to Church Street; Church to Canal, Canal to Wooster, and Wooster to Fourth Street, with a single track; thence through Fourth St. to Sixth Avenue, and through Sixth Avenue to Harlem, with a double track; also to lay a single track in Thompson Street from Fulton to Canal Street, to connect with the Eighth Avenue Railroad. This route was slightly altered the following year.”
In 1858, the Ninth Avenue Railroad ran from Astor House Hotel at the Battery to 51st Street. New York’s Port Authority evolved from these companies, so its buildings are vital to transportation and communications networks.
The Port Authority and companies that already purchased its places own the colonial highway tracks that today’s high-tech communications companies will follow....