Request for help from New Yorkers-- are there grain silos in lower manhattan?

[spooked911]

Also, is there a big dark factory with huge smokestacks next to the silos?

see photo here:
http://covertoperations.blogspot.com/2008/12/since-when-are-there-grain-silos-in.html

taken from this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVahuOpOJYE
at about 4:50 in

[Lithos]

1. There are water towers

You see them all over the place - it is the law.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_tower#New_York_City

L-

[jberryhill]

2. I always wondered about that

Whenever I'm in NY, I notice the water towers all over the place, and had wondered why they are so prevalent there.

[HamdenRice]

3. Looks like the ConEdison power plant to me

Not sure what part of the picture you are referring to, and it's very blurry (did not look at the video).

But there is a building that looks like a grain elevator in the background. The shot if from West to East, and that building looks to me like the Con Edison power plant on the East River, which does indeed kind of look like a mid western grain elevator and plant.

[HamdenRice]

4. Definitely not water towers

OK, I looked at the video. My speakers aren't working so I'm not sure what points the video is supposed to support, but the captions suggest it's an OCT video.

The visual pov is confusing, but it seems to be from the south west of the WTC site, from a far distance (like New Jersey) using a very long telephoto lens. Such a lens tends to compress the depth of field so that things that are far apart looked pressed together in the same plane. This is important because it explains some of your questions.

What you are looking at is WTC 7, and beyond it, not Manhattan, but Queens. If you look closely, you will see at around 4:30, 5:30 and 6:30 not only the silos, but a sliver of blue water in the upper left corner. That's the East River. You can even see a glimpse of a bridge, which is I think the 59th Street Bridge. If you follow the line of that water, you will see that the silos are behind the water -- ie across the East River from Manhattan.

From that perspective, you are looking past WTC 7 to Hunter's Point, Queens. What looks like a white blob floating near the silos is the gigantic tennis tent complex in Hunter's Point, whose name I forget (tennisport or something like that).

The silos look like they are next to the power plant. They are definitely familiar, but I hadn't realized they were torn down a few years ago. They are the old Norval Cement silos:

http://www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com/bigmap/queens/lic/hunterspt/norval/index.htm

In the photos at the above link, you are looking at those same silos from Queens, with the East River behind them, and the Lower East Side and Williamsburg Bridge beyond the river -- ie almost the opposite view from the video.

So, in the video you are looking past the WTC to the Keyspan or Con Ed power plant, the Norval cement silos and the tennis complex.

The reason the landscape in the distance near the silos looks like a small midwestern town is because the view is not Manhattan; it's Queens.

[jberryhill]

5. Looks like a ringer

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_aJeegFsC3nY/STvfrApStvI/AAAAAAAAA-w/OSJEyxPjRDQ/s400/wtc7+grain+silo.png

and the power plant:




(the silos were taken down, btw)

[HamdenRice]

6. The power plant was the giveaway

IIRC, it's not actually the Con Ed plant, although most people point to it and call it that. There was a large area of the Brooklyn/Queens side of the East River covered by power plants of different companies, and everyone referred to it as Con Ed.

That particular plant, though, I believe is the power station for the Long Island Railroad.

In the video capture you posted, you can see a sliver of the East River all the way at the left of the frame, about even with the floor below the top floor of WTC 7.

[spooked911]

9. Yeah, the power plant is very recognizable-- found it

http://wirednewyork.com/forum/showthread.php?t=5160
(scroll down)

Schwartz Chemical Company
50-01 2nd St., Long Island City, New York

they tore down the stacks a couple years ago, I guess

I couldn't find the address of the Norval silos but Hunters point is close enough, I guess.

[spooked911]

7. Thanks, that's helpful.

Good point on the perspective and that it could be Queens-- though where are all the big buildings that should be in between wtc7 and Queens?

I don't think it's the Norval silos, as the ones in the video are a double row of four. Plus, there is still no sign of that dark factory-like building.

The video is not an OCT video.

[HamdenRice]

8. Big buildings

From the perspective of the video, there are very few big buildings in Manhattan. I realize this counter the stereotype, but there really aren't that many big buildings in the area covered by this point of view.

From WTC traveling northeast, you would encounter Chinatown, Little Italy, Soho, the Lower East Side, the East Village and neighborhoods of similar scale (ie generally 10 stories or lower). If the trajectory were more due east, you would see big buildings like the Merrill Lynch, the Municipal Building or the Federal Building. But this perspective is very much northeast, and it is over areas that had few tall buildings in 2001. There are still few tall buildings, although in the NYU area there are a few new tall ones on Houston Street. But generally, it's just not a tall building part of Manhattan.

[spooked911]

10. Gotcha, thanks

[LARED]

12. The video is not an OCT video?

What's an OCT video?

[SidDithers]

11. .

nevermind. time stamps show your updates :)

Sid

[jberryhill]

13. Looking at your blog post

You stated "it looks fake to me".

Does it still look fake to you?

If so, how did it stop looking fake? Did it change, or did you?

Or is your uninformed impression simply a bad gauge of whether something that "looks fake" is indeed fake?