Did you know it was Flag Day?

According to The Port Authority Website:

"The George Washington Bridge is home to the world's largest free-flying American flag. The flag, which is located under the upper arch of the New Jersey tower, drapes vertically for 90 feet and flies freely, responding to breezes from the Hudson River or Palisades. The flag's stripes are approximately 5 feet wide and the stars measure about 4 feet in diameter. Weather permitting, the flag is flown on the following eight holidays: Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, Presidents Day, Memorial Day, Flag Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Columbus Day, and Veterans Day."

So today is Flag Day, although I will admit I didn't know that. There were also speedboat races on the Hudson. I didn't know about them, either, so I missed the big race upriver, though I got to the window in time to see probably 50 speedboats going upriver and to hear them too. I did get my camera out in time to see some of them come back down..

The hardest thing about living in New York City is that there is NEVER a way to know everything that is going on in the city on any day. It seems impossible to get a real handle on everything, and that is sad, because if I had known about the boat race I might well have taken Sienna down to the river and gotten better pictures. Aren't the boats great looking? The huge clump of them going North at the same time was amazing. I think if you live in other places if you make it your business to know what is happening you can do it. Here... no way dammit!!

However, it is raining downtown, not here, we just got some thunder and that was it. Some things you can miss easily!!

Looking for the Hudson

At the top of Manhattan, in 1776, the Americans built a fort. They lost it the same year. They built it in the summer, they won the Battle of Harlem Heights and sent the British out of Manhattan, and they lost it on November 16th 1776. Fort Washington ... though I suppose the British didn't call it that while they held it.

The Americans weren't staying in the Fort, or at least the big guys weren't. They were not far away at the Morris Jumel Mansion, though I don't suppose it was a Mansion then (or now). When the Americans moved out, the British moved in and stayed there til they gave up New York.









The Americans finally got the Fort back on November 25, 1783, along with the rest of New York, though it wasn't much to get back and it was a long way from the Fort to the southern tip of Manhattan where the rest of the city was located.





President Washington gave a dinner party at the Mansion in July 1790. At the table that night were three future Presidents of the United States: John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and John Quincy Adams.

Sometimes History is interesting all by itself. To know that in those days, you could see all the way to the Harbor , the Hudson River, the Harlem River and the Bronx from right here.

Now, you can't see the River, or much else, from up here. You have to go further up, to the Cloisters to see all the way down the river from up high.... but that's a trip for another day.

I wonder what all those guys talked about on that July night in 1790....

This children's book was written about the Little Red Lighthouse under the GW Bridge. When the bridge went up, they left the Lighthouse where it was and it is really surprising to see it nestled right up against the pylons of the bridge.



It is a 5 minute walk from my apartment. You have to go over the WestSide Highway on a pedestrian walkway and then down a pretty steep hill for a tiny bit, over railroad tracks and down another small hill and then all of a sudden you are in a park alongside the river. You are close enough to the river to stick your toes in it if you want to and there are tennis courts, picnic tables and benches and it is wide open to the broad expanse of the river.


At night sometimes you get the train whistles as the Amtrak trains go by and when it is really foggy you get fog horns...

the Heights

This is another marker in Bennett Park. The Heights were the place that the Americans wanted to hold to control the Hudson, an they built a fort here to do it, but the British took the Heights and gained control. They held the Heights for slightly more than 7 years.

Formerly, I lived in Chelsea, which has a history that focuses on the 1900's, but here the history is different. When you walk around this neighborhood, you can still imagine the two forces fighting it out to control the high ground. Here endeth the history lesson for the day.