City Lens: A Mystery Underfoot

Working in the industry I do occasionally grants me the benefit of access to some very interesting places. Generally, these locales are not accessible to the public and are often dirty, dangerous, or downright strange.

After researching The Cable Building for my June post, I was discussing my findings with a partner at my firm when he suddenly recalled that another building under our banner has existing wheels in the sub-basement. He described them only as large and upright – I immediately asked to see them when he next ventured downtown.

Last week, upon hearing the time had finally come, I decided to spend time researching the building to find out what these mysterious wheels could belong to. Some background about my time in the city: when I moved here my first fascination was with the subway. Coming from the rural north devoid of public transit, I fell in love with the idea of the subway and learned everything I could about it. I visited the New York Transit Museum in Brooklyn, I read books about the history of the system - the development of the original three lines and their consolidation into the MTA (and their abysmal choice to keep the fare at 5 cents for around 40 years while the system hemorrhaged funds) - and learned of early predecessors’ attempts to build their own “subways.” Alfred Ely Beach, inventor, and creator of Scientific American Magazine, built his own test tunnel as a technology demonstration between 1869-1870. Dubbed Beach Pneumatic Transit, the test tunnel carried one car on a 312-foot track with giant fans at each end, which pressurized the track, allowing the car to run under Broadway from Warren to Murray Streets.

Station, Tunnel Portal, and Car of the Beach Pneumatic Transit in New York City
New York Historical Society, Bildnummer 70265

The plan of the Beach Pneumatic Transit station and tunnel
Scientific American, March 5, 1870 issue

The project was a success with the public who were able to ride it as an attraction; the 25-cent entry fee was donated to charities. Beach attempted to secure funding to extend the line all the way to Central Park, but initial interest waned, investors began to pull funding, and finally, the stock market crash of 1873 shut the project down permanently. The tunnel was sealed and largely fell out of public knowledge.

Then, in 1912, when excavating for the BMT (Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit – one of the original three systems) along Broadway, workers dug into the Beach tunnel, finding the remains of the car and the grand piano and crystal chandelier, features of the waiting room, still intact.

Beach built his test line under the Rogers Peet department store building at 258 Broadway, across the street from City Hall. The original five-story building burned down in 1898, was replaced by an 8-story building in 1899, and was designated a New York City Landmark in 2010. This is the building where my company has agency, and where the sub-basement – completely off-limits to the public – holds mysterious wheels.

Last Monday the 18th, I finally ventured into that sub-basement. Hoping to get a glimpse of the Beach tube, I was disappointed – as it turns out, the existing tunnel is within the limits of the defunct old City Hall station across the street and can no longer be accessed except by a (rumored) manhole on Reade Street (something I won’t be attempting). However, what I did find was most intriguing indeed: two huge, nearly upright wheels, partially imbedded in the floor of the sub-basement, surrounded by raised concrete slabs.

Rogers Peet Building Sub-Basement © Chelsea Pathiakis, 2025

Rogers Peet Building Sub-Basement © Chelsea Pathiakis, 2025

The room was a cluttered mess of building materials, an excessive amount of hand sanitizer, and more dead cockroaches than I had (n)ever hoped to see in this lifetime, but I was thrilled nonetheless. And then the mystery set in: Are these existing cable car sheaves? Why can’t I find a record of them being here anywhere online? Are these left over from the original building or were they installed when the second iteration was being constructed in 1899? It is surprisingly difficult to find concrete information on the city’s cable car and streetcar lines but maybe I haven’t been looking in the right places. Perhaps I have a trip to the City Museum in my future.

Whatever the case may be – and I will keep searching for answers – the city history enthusiast in me is overjoyed. My Roaming project is in large part about documenting what remains of bygone eras in this city and this mystery fits right in.

In Focus: William Eggleston

A pioneer of color street photography, William Eggleston’s work has floated in the periphery of those whose work I am more familiar with. A contemporary of Stephen Shore, Eggleston’s work similarly focuses on the ordinary and mundane – street signs, condiments, gutter trash – and brings a rare quality to them with his use of color transparency film and later, the dye-transfer printing process. 

Dye-transfer is a printing technique that yields pure, intense color, originally used to print Technicolor films, color prints used in advertising, and large transparencies for display. The process is responsible for the deep, deep reds present in much of his work, and most especially in Greenwood, Mississippi, 1971, also known colloquially as The Red Ceiling.

William Eggleston, Greenwood Mississippi, c. 1971

The first photo I saw of Eggleston’s was En Route to New Orleans, 1971-74, from his Los Alamos series. I was struck, not only by the simplicity of the subject matter and the absolutely dazzling color, but by the framing of the shot and the elongated, translucent shadow of the glass on the tray table. I found a postcard of the photo in the gift shop at The Met years ago and knew instantly that this piece was something special. 

William Eggleston, En Route to New Orleans, c. 1971-74

I had the postcard hung on the wall of my apartment and one lazy weekend sometime in 2017, I decided to look further into Eggleston’s body of work. I stopped in my tracks when I came across Untitled, c.1983-1986, also from the Los Alamos series. 

William Eggleston, Untitled, c.1983-1986

So simple, so stunning, and there was that brilliant red I loved so much. I printed a copy on high-quality paper and added it to the wall in my bedroom. And I took note: street photography subject matter does not have to be groundbreaking, because even the most ordinary of objects can mesmerize. 

A few more favorites from the Los Alamos, 1965-1974 and The Outlands, 1969-74 series’:

City Lens: The Cable Building

Being positively enthralled with NYC history for more than a decade, I have come to learn about so many interesting places lost to development, lost to technological advancement, lost to time. 

The Cable Building © Chelsea Pathiakis, 2023

The Cable Building, an imposing nine-story, beaux-arts style construction at 611 Broadway, comes to mind. Built in 1892 and still standing, its original use has been lost to all three factors. The Cable Building was the power station of the Metropolitan Traction Company, one of the city’s cable car companies that moved cars on Broadway from Bowling Green to 36th Street. The cables, housed in the basement of the building, were carried on four 32-foot wheels that pulled the cables which pulled the streetcars. The power station was in use until 1901, after the steel cables, rife with mechanical issues, were replaced with electric cables. Later that year, the Broadway line ceased operation. 

1894 Scribners magazine, Public Domain,
 https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=149661343

The building was sold in 1925 and was then occupied by offices and small manufacturing. Keith Haring had a studio in the building from 1982 to 1985. (According to Andy Warhol, Haring’s rent was $1,000 in 1983 and the large space did not have a bathroom.) In 1989, the Angelika Film Center moved into the west side of the building, at the corner of West Houston and Mercer Streets, and converted the basement space where the cable wheels were previously housed into its six-screen theater. The building is in the NoHo Historic District, designated as such by the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission in 1999. 

Keith Haring in his studio at 611 Broadway by Andy Warhol, 1983

There is something so gratifying in learning the history of spaces like this one. I was first drawn to the Cable Building because of its architecture; then learned of its connection to a lost form of public transportation, a constant interest of mine. Finding out Keith Haring kept a studio in the space was the cherry on top. Eleven years here, and there is so much still to discover.

Reminiscence

When I was nearing the end of my time in art school, I began to put together a master notebook filled with notable photographers, darkroom procedure, basic camera mechanics, and notes from photo exhibitions. I had kept dozens of notebooks with this information prior and felt it all belonged in one central place. A few days ago, as I was flipping through my notes on photographers, I realized that some had since passed away. Among them were Robert Frank, 1924-2019; Jerry Uelsmann, 1934-2022; George Tice, who I’d met when he did a guest lecture, 1938-2025; and just last week, Sebastião Salgado, February 8, 1944-May 23, 2025. Salgado actually passed the day I was updating my notebook which made me feel uneasy for a short while.

Updating these dates and pouring over my notebook again, I began to think of times passed. The exhibition announcement for the Mount Washington summer landscape photography course I took in 2009 is taped between two pages. I remember that summer vividly: driving up to the White Mountains in my old Chevy Malibu listening to Death Cab, staying at the Mount Washington Hotel’s historic Bretton Arms Inn, roaming the grounds around the main hotel and finding a stockpile of old sinks and bathtubs in the woods (no doubt discarded there after the last renovation), waking up before sunrise to drive down to Franconia Notch and cautiously trying to photograph a moose through the open car window. 

Pondicherry Wildlife Refuge, Whitefield, New Hampshire © Chelsea Pathiakis, 2009

I chose to focus on creating panoramas that summer, even purchasing a nifty little gadget for my tripod to help the frames line up better. At the exhibition in the Vault Gallery (RIP), I displayed three or four long, glossy panoramas mounted on foam board. That was the summer Michael Jackson died, and we all sat around the large tube TV in the makeshift computer lab in one of the Inn’s parlors, watching the shocking news unfold while it rained in the mountains. That was the summer I took a ferry to Star Island in the Isles of Shoals and left three rolls of black and white film on a rock near the shore, and some kind soul brought them to the front desk of the visitor center I called a week later in a panic. 

Star Island, Isles of Shoals, New Hampshire © Chelsea Pathiakis, 2009

More recently, it’s been a year since I started updating this blog monthly. It’s brought me such pleasure to spend each new month researching a photographer of interest or giving an update on my Roaming project. I’m delving deeper into my areas of interest and loving the process of discovery.

The Art of Observation

I’ve been thinking about what it means to be observant. I’m someone who sees a lot more than I let on: sometimes what others fail to see (and sometimes what others attempt to conceal). I watch and I listen and I always remember to look up. Being observant is how I’ve kept joy alive in my life for the last 9+ years with my #roaming project, and about twenty years since I began to document my life on film.

There is an unfortunate disconnect between what I see and what I remember, which was the catalyst to start documenting in the first place. But even though my short-term memory is questionable at best, I remember those things that felt important. The first time I visited a far-flung cemetery in Brooklyn, and what it meant to discover that place. The smell of honeysuckle through the open car window on a winding road in the Algarve. Watching the spray of the Mediterranean kiss the cliffs on the Peloponnese peninsula in southern Greece. Feeling the sun on my skin as I made my way through labyrinthine hedges on the grounds of Versailles. Daily life is filled with little frustrations and grievances; it’s worth the reminder that there are pockets of joy that will always quiet those ugly moments.

I have not been out shooting as much the last few months as I’d have liked. The weekend weather has been unpredictable, and I’ve been focused on other things at home. Though my project has been on a brief hiatus, I’ve never stopped observing my surroundings and taking moments to appreciate how beautiful even the smallest things can be.

In Memoriam: The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

Today marks the 114th anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, the deadliest disaster in New York City history prior to the September 11th attacks.

Last Tuesday, I attended a lecture at the Jefferson Market Library put on by Village Preservation and the Remember the Triangle Fire Coalition. Dr. Daniel Levinson Wilk, Associate Professor of American History at FIT and board member of the Coalition, told the story of the factory, the fire, the survivors, and those who perished.

Dr. Wilk began by explaining the history of ready-made clothing. Prior to the late 1800’s, all clothing was handmade and tailored to a person’s specific size and measurements. The market for standard sized garments began with sailors and slaves, with a significant turning point during the Civil War, when uniforms were mass manufactured for soldiers. One of the first methods for the mass production of clothing in New York City was through a process called “outwork,” wherein a specific part of, say, a shirt, was brought, en masse, to the home of a seamstress in her tenement apartment. She may be responsible for stitching one single seam on one hundred of the same item, then the garments were picked up and brought to another apartment to be handled by another seamstress, and so on and so forth until the garments were complete. (A lot of running around.)

When the original factories were built, immigrant seamstresses had to carry their own sewing machines to and from the factories each day, until such time as more efficient processes were invented and installed. The floors of garment factories were crowded, messy, and safety standards as we know them today were non-existent; there was no OSHA. The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory occupied the top three floors (eight, nine, and ten) of the former Asch building, now called the Brown building. It is suspected that the fire started on the eighth floor from someone accidentally igniting a fabric scrap pile with a cigarette butt. As the fire spread, the workers on the eighth floor were able to escape through the elevator and the stairs, and the workers on the tenth floor were able to escape via the roof. The workers on the ninth floor, however, were trapped. The doors to the exits were locked, and after sheltering under their work benches and attempting to break down the doors, some made it out to the fire escape that then collapsed and they plummeted to the street below. Others jumped from the windows, falling so hard they crashed through the sidewalk below. 146 people, 123 of them recent Italian and Jewish immigrant women and girls, aged 14 to 23, lost their lives…all in the space of fifteen minutes.

As mentioned, there were no safety standards for factories at that time. Sprinklers were available but very expensive to retrofit, and the ownership of Blank and Harris were as cheap as they come. After so many people lost their lives, Blank and Harris were acquitted of any wrongdoing, collected on the hundreds of life insurance policies they had quietly taken out on their employees, and never offered a dime to the bereaved families.

As a direct result of this tragedy, three major safety standards were put in place. First, all floors of factories had to install illuminated exit signs over every exit. Second, smoking of any kind was banned from factory floors. And third, all doors must open outward to prevent a bottleneck in the event of an emergency. This disaster was also one of the catalysts for the labor movement; Frances Perkins, workers-rights advocate and the fourth US Secretary of Labor (1933-1945 under FDR), was one of the bystanders who watched workers plummet to their deaths from the fire.

When Dr. Wilk finished speaking, other members of the Coalition talked about their work for the recently installed memorial at the Brown building. A group effort by descendants of the victims of the fire or others who felt connected to the tragedy in some way were invited to sew together a 300-foot-long ribbon, The Collective Ribbon, made from 400 pieces of fabric along with a description of their personal connection. This Ribbon was then etched onto metal, which has been installed on the southeast corner of the building, all the way to the 10th floor. The bottom part of the Ribbon hangs horizontally over black glass, in which the names of all the victims have been carved out and can be read from below in the reflection on the glass. I perused the photographs the Coalition had brought with them, then walked over to see the installation myself after the event was finished.

Nine Years Roaming

For the first time in many years, winter has actually felt like proper winter. Bundled up all the time, fingers painfully numb from frequently removing gloves to take photos, my roaming outings have been few and far between. However, here in New York, we're starting to see some slightly less frigid days, so I'm hoping to get outside more soon.

Because the true anniversary of my project is on Leap Day, I have two days to choose from on non-Leap Years to celebrate and take stock of where I've been and what I've done. With that in mind, the following photos offer a brief glimpse of neighborhoods I've roamed in the last few months. 

Upper West Side

Astoria

East Village