USS ILLINOIS AND LAUNCH: ARMORY FOR NAVAL RESERVES
West 135th Street Pier
JULY 2, 1937. ABBOTT FILE 251

USS ILLINOIS AND WHARF: ARMORY FOR NAVAL RESERVES
West 135th Street Pier
JULY 2, 1937. ABBOTT FILE 252

BURNS BROS. COAL ELEVATOR AND USS ILLINOIS: ARMORY FOR NAVAL RESERVES
West 135th Street Pier
JULY 2, 1937. ABBOTT FILE 253

Burns Bros. Coal Elevator, 1930-33 (CGLI)

The USS Illinois had been a naval battleship from 1901 until 1920, when it was assigned as a training ship to the First Batallion of the Naval Militia of New York. In 1924, the ship was disarmed and converted into an armory, with a large, barn-like shed built upon the hull. Renamed the USS Prairie State, the nation's largest floating armory was docked at Manhattan's 135th Street Pier on the Hudson River.

The 375-foot houseboat attracted Abbott's eye, and she made two photographs of it, one with a utility boat in the foreground and a second with a trio of men soaking up the sunshine of a July afternoon on the rotting pier.

Between the piers at 134th and 135th Streets was one of five coal yards operated by the Burns Bros. Coal Company. Abbott photographed one of its coal elevators, showing the armory in the background. The elevators were used to unload coal from ships docked at the piers: a bucket (not visible in the photograph) was lowered to a vessel, then raised to the booms (the horizontal structure at left), moved along them, and dumped into the elevator. From the elevator, coal was then loaded onto trucks standing at its base.

Coal was a commonly used fuel in the 1930s, and Burns Bros., with three offices, four garages, and five yards, was one of the city's largest suppliers. Between 1930 and 1933, Abbott photographed another Burns Bros. coal elevator; her two depictions of this industrial structure differ significantly.

Taken on the diagonal, the earlier photograph describes the elevator as a cluster of massive volumes, with all its parts (including the important bucket) visible. In the later image, the ragged profile of the elevator suggests a gawky figure dwarfing the equally odd structure of the floating armory. What was lost in precisionist glamour was gained in surrealist humor.

When Abbott photographed the 135th Street pier, the Henry Hudson Parkway was under construction, and the coal elevator stood in its path. The floating armory remained in place until 1951, when it was relocated to 25th Street on the East River and eventually scrapped. In 1991, the city opened a 22-acre sewage treatment plant at the site; in response to neighborhood protests, a state park was built on top of it in 1993.

Return to North of 59th Street