Who would know this beauty now?

A Beautiful Image of Old Route 9 in Fishkill, New York

It is good to know the beauty certain landscapes once possessed. When the 1-84 highway came thundering through back in the 1960s, this tranquil scene was gone forever -- a vista swept-clean. Construction workers on that highway detail unearthed artifacts of pedigree - each a piece of our human history - blown to the four winds - lost to personal collections, the auction block, attics or the trash.

Lost

I dreamed I found the Fishkill Supply Depot last night. First, I found its magazine, a wonderful dome-like structure of brick, carved into Round Mountain. In the dream, thousands came to marvel at it and it was suddenly significant.

I do think about this place, this compressed Revolutionary War military city, lacking honor, lacking its physical space. I keep getting drawn to this story. There is something about disenfranchised historic places. They have their own power to draw you in even with their stories immobilized.

A Visual Curiousity

Again, back to Route 9, a New York highway.


How curious. Someone had the beautiful idea to put a greenhouse on the grounds of the 1974 Dutchess Mall.
What inspired that? Now, in 2008, it sits imprisoned behind a chain link fence.

One should ask why?

The beaten down path

Above: On Interstate Route 9, a view of the old Dutchess Mall in Fishkill, New York, built over a one-of-a-kind Rev-War National Register Historic Site. Below: A "For Sale" sign-- one of the many to blanket the road.

Route 9 is a well-traveled Hudson Valley road that curls up from Westchester and cuts a wide multi-lane swath in Dutchess County. It's most bland, or I could say, its most corrosive commercial visuals can be viewed on a section of the road that starts in Fishkill, New York and ends in Poughkeepsie. Some rather brilliant Dutchess County planners, who oft say "off the record" that their innovate county planning recommendations are seldom followed, refer to this swath of road as the "bloody scar". One can see how they arrived at this scathing name.For here is where the homogeneous "big-box" stores rein, where multitudes of Dunkin Donuts, Burger King and MacDonald shops dot the once green and graceful terrain, a terrain now restrained by tons of blacktop.

One of the more dismal aspects of this Route 9 landscape is the commonplace felling of trees. As these construction products rolled out from the 1960s and continue forward, many a brilliant, centuries-old, large tree faced, "will face" its removal from the human viewscape.These trees are magnificent green works of art in their own right; living and sustaining life.An environmentalist friend of mine told me how often, nothing living within its mighty boughs is held sacred. He recounted a story of young, baby eagles being thrown to their deaths from their nest in an ancient tree, least their survival impact a construction project work schedule.

There does remain a patchwork of ragged green lots on Route 9, most of them brandishing large "FOR SALE" signs, "COMMERCIAL ZONING" in large print. For now, these undeveloped lots remain micro hold-outs for refugee wooded creatures, scrambling for some place to call home.

As much as I hate what Route 9 is, on this particular stretch, it fascinates me as well. Here is the laboratory of homogeneous USA, the place referred to by writer James Howard Kunstler, as the "geography of nowhere." His book, by the same name, sets a certain visual template for change of this particular and very American phenomenon. Much more to delve into on this topic.
Posted by MF at 10:54 AM 0 comments

This blog is centered around the physical environment of the United States, the world we look at every day -- its fragile history, its sweeping beauty -- ever threatened by expansive commercial construction plans -- and its mosaic of divergent life, from the wild to the tame. But it will also choose to recognize the innovative, and the people with the sentiment for a finer, visual future within this environment. Visual decisions for a finer world impact us deeply and ultimately give us all a more enriched space in which to explore.

Jump the banks of the Hudson River and walk inland. There unseen, lies a historic world, forgotten in so many ways. 10,000 years of American Indian culture, vanished. Revolutionary War artifacts, lying in static clusters. under the blacktop. Museums under the earth, under the Wal-Mart and the Home Depot. Good to acknowledge what is underfoot.

One of the topics I will keep returning to in this blog is the Fishkill Supply Depot. A fascinating piece of Revolutionary War history, recklessly tossed aside. Curious regional choices made in the decades since World War II have broken many of the threads that bind us to an interesting past, and certainly hinder our celebration of it. Posted by MF at 8:23 AM 0 comments
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