NYC "The Hole" creepy hidden neighborhood

[NYSEE]

So there are some parts of nyc that when first seen would never come to mind as "The Big Apple". Every city has them and its fascinating seeing these scary rundown areas knowing there just miles away from massive manhattan.

I watched this documentary on a neighborhood nicknamed "the hole". Located on the border between brooklyn and queens down by Howard Beach. Although its said that the towns around it dont claim the 6 block area as theirs. It is called the hole because its 30 feet below grade so its constantly flooded. The area is not apart of the city's sewer system and each house requires cesspools. There are no sidewalks, stoplights or streetlights. It is also said throughout time the mob have dumped many bodies here.

Here are a few articles with photos and videos explaining this area as good as possible. Its very interesting.

http://kensinger.blogspot.com/2009/08/hole.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hole_(2010_film)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VruBRWp9ReY

http://www.thelmagazine.com/newyork/...nt?oid=1792323

http://vimeo.com/11829554

[llamaorama]

That's freaking weird. Never thought that would exist in Brooklyn or Queens, whichever it's actually in. It almost sounds like the real life location of the landfill in "The Great Gatsby"

Actually, the part about horses, empty fields, massive flooding, and abandoned townhouses sounds just like inner northeast Houston...maybe Kashmere Gardens or Settegast or the southern part of Aldine. They are all like that-basically a urban prairie wasteland with unregulated development and issues with flooding and sewer infrastructure.

[Dralcoffin]

Even Google seems to be befuddled by this neighborhood. On Streetview, the surrounding neighborhoods are bright high definition, but going down into the hole, everything switches to gray low-res.

(Although I don't see a drop of 30 feet anywhere. More like five feet below the surrounding areas, so still about six or seven feet above sea level.)

[Crawford]

This is Spring Creek area of East NY, and it isn't below sea level.

It's city owned urban renewal land. They're building the Gateway Spring Creek project here. Any "empty" rows of townhouses or apartment buildings (if of recent vintage) are probably u/c.

[ardecila]

Originally Posted by Crawford

This is Spring Creek area of East NY, and it isn't below sea level.

It's city owned urban renewal land. They're building the Gateway Spring Creek project here. Any "empty" rows of townhouses or apartment buildings (if of recent vintage) are probably u/c.

The Gateway project is 2 miles away along the Belt Parkway. "The Hole" is just the triangle formed by Linden Blvd, Conduit Ave, and Drew St. It can't be East NY because it's actually in Queens - the border is Drew. I'm sure this will be developed soon, but right now it appears to be just as Detroitish as the articles claim. I'm not shocked, though - I got used to this sort of thing after living in New Orleans, and you can find it in a few odd places in Chicago as well (around Calumet, namely).

The landfill from Gatsby was a real place - it was transformed into Flushing Meadows Park for the 1939 World's Fair.

I've always thought it was odd that New York is the only American city to embrace high-rise and mid-rise buildings outside of the core. The whole south part of Brooklyn is dominated by them, and more keep going up. It's very similar to what I saw outside Rome, Paris, Vienna, and of course many former communist countries but there are none of these in the States?

[Bedhead]

There are some shots of this neighborhood scattered throughout this thread by Sabotai:

http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/show...27#post5252689

[Chicago103]

Originally Posted by ardecila

......and you can find it in a few odd places in Chicago as well (around Calumet, namely).

As in the Lake Calumet area? The difference of course is that this "hole" neighborhood is actually quite small and quite close to many dense neighborhoods in Brooklyn and Queens and the Lake Calumet region in Chicago is several square miles in area and there are literally places where you can stand and not see a single building or person anywhere. Rural looking roads, wetlands, fields of cattails twelve feet tall, landfills, small woods. There are also some really isolated residential areas that look downright rural and a nearly abandoned trailer park.

[Private Dick]

We've visited the Hole more than once already on the forum, rather recently too.

[MolsonExport]

Fascinating. A suject that I find most interesting (as evidenced by my long running Walled City of Kowloon thread)

[tdawg]

wow, i have never heard of this place, and i've lived in Brooklyn and Queens for 11 years. amazing.

[brickell]

Finally found it on google maps. Doesn't look nearly as bad there, but pretty bizarre for NYC just the same. Zillow shows a couple of homes for sale in the $150s.

I've seen blighted areas just as bad around Miami though. No horses, but plenty of chickens. I did see someone with an emu once.

[ardecila]

What's the deal with Conduit Ave? Was it supposed to be some kind of superhighway that never got built? I know there were/are a lot of missing links in NYC's expressway system after people got fed up with Robert Moses' raping/pillaging.

[photoLith]

Reminds me of half the ghettos here in Houston.

[Centropolis]

Interesting. Reminds me a little of the old and low lying residential left in heavy industrial areas in and around st louis near the river... where bodies are dumped...

[sofresh808]

Originally Posted by ardecila

What's the deal with Conduit Ave? Was it supposed to be some kind of superhighway that never got built? I know there were/are a lot of missing links in NYC's expressway system after people got fed up with Robert Moses' raping/pillaging.

Hah, I wondered the same thing too when I first ended up out there. Apparently was supposed to be part of the I-78 Bushwick Expressway to connect the Midtown-Queens Tunnel and Williamsburg Bridge to the Belt Parkway.

http://www.nycroads.com/roads/bushwick/