English Kills

Brooklyn, NY - upfromflames - Monday, August 6th, 2007 : goo

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Deep in the forgotten recesses of Brooklyn's East Williamsburg Industrial Park, you can find English Kills.

Its once thriving waters connected the village Bushwick to the East River, shipping out agricultural produce to New York’s burgeoning population.

Later, English Kills became part of the industrial waterway network that helped this area surge in the late 19th and early 20th century as a center of manufacturing.

Now, (lined by trash haulers and manufacturers), it exists as a fetid, stagnant tributary to one of the nation’s dirtiest waterways, Newtown Creek.

But beyond all those faces and phases, there is a ghostly beauty to be found at English Kills; a haunting of itself, a memory of what once was, and what waters once flowed here.

Perhaps one day, those clean waters will flow again…

Thanks to the BPL for the archive photo of Kills.

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