Following up on yesterday's post, if you ever want to make people disappear go to the top of Mount Morris and take a few photos. The camera shy guys loitering up there vanish in a hurry!
The old fire tower is still standing. The tower was completed in 1857 and is the last of eleven fire towers that used to be in Manhattan. Emergency repairs, I assume the white beams in the top photo, were made in 1994. That would indicate that the railings at the top have been missing for at least twelve years.
I mentioned yesterday that a set of not-so-bad looking steps were cut off with a chain link fence. There were no safety warnings on the west side steps, which featured an exposed length of rusty rebar.
There were indications that the Parks Department was trying to save some of the materials. I saw two collections of the stone wall pediments. The collection in the third photo actually looked ordered and cared for. It gives me a little hope that there's a plan to someday refurbish the walls with the original materials that date back to the Works Progress Administration in the 1930s.
In addition to serving as a breeding ground for mosquitos, the sound/video booth for the ampitheater is falling apart. The wooden roof is rotting and the narrow space behind the building is a communal garbage dump.
I'll end this on a happier note. The Richard Rogers Ampitheater is the site of the Saturday performances of the Charlie Parker Jazz Festival each August. Rogers grew up across the street from the park and the ampitheater was his gift to the city.
There's a bunch more photos that I'm going to throw onto Flickr after Thanksgiving. Guests arrive tomorrow evening and somebody has a lot of cooking and cleaning to do before they get here.
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