31
indicates the site of the plants on the southern shore with the word "ruins."19 Alterations in the number
and location of Barren Island industrial facilities resulted from general economic, political and social
forces, but also from some local mishaps. Fire damaged or destroyed three plants: the Cornell works in
1859; the White factory in 1878; and the New York Sanitary Utilization Company in 1904. In the early
1860s, high winds leveled the Swift facility.20 During the decades before and after the turn of the
century, the island's shore fronting Rockaway Inlet proved unstable, and perhaps as many as five land
falls occurred. Around 1890, the land occupied by the Wimpfheimer fertilizer plant on the eastern tip of
the island broke off and disappeared into the inlet taking the buildings with it. Another landfall came in
1902, although the damage caused is unknown. Nineteen hundred and five saw two incidents. In the
summer, land along the shore suddenly sank five feet. And then in late November and early December,
the New York Sanitary Utilization Company, on the east shore, lost an acre of land and a number of
buildings. First three structures went and then several days later the office and pump house. The
company started rebuilding, a process not yet completed in April 1907, when the eastern corner of the
island sank into Jamaica Bay, together with buildings and piers.21
The explanation given in the press for the 1905 and 1907 incidents centered on increasingly strong tidal
action. As Rockaway Point extended further westward, the inlet became narrower, making currents of
"fearful force," especially during unusually high tides. Such conditions in 1907 caused strong eddies
which undermined the concrete foundations on which the new factory was being built. Whatever their
cause, the landfalls did not cause abandonment of the Barren Island operations. Indeed as evident in the
1911 map and other documents, the Thomas F. White Company and the New York Sanitary Utilization
Company rebuilt or enlarged their plants.22
More important than the currents of Rockaway Inlet, the tides of economic and social change operated
against the continuation of the garbage and horse rendering plants on Barren Island. The island's
industries always had a peculiarly noisome quality. A writer in the sedate Harpers Monthly of October
1878 mentioned the "'disgusting fish oil factories." That odors emanating from Barren Island constituted a
nuisance was even acknowledged by writers boosting the commercial and industrial accomplishments of
late nineteenth-century Kings County.23 Complaints became more numerous and shrill as communities
around the bay increased in population. In 1899, both the state legislature and the city government made
efforts to eliminate the Barren Island nuisance. These efforts failed because of the opposition of the
governor and the mayor and because of the inability to devise some other means for disposing of the
city's refuse. In addition to complaints arising from the stench, the horse factories had to contend with a
decline in the number of animal carcasses. During the year 1918, the island received 600 dead horses,
certainly no inconsiderable number, but a far cry from-the heyday when fifty animals arrived every day.24
In the late years of the second decade of the twentieth century, municipal authorities faced a dilemma in
the mounting-protest by groups and citizens of the Rockaway peninsula and the mainland and the
absence of some alternative method to dispose of the city's refuse. The Barren Island garbage plants
19 Map, Dripps, 1852; U.S. Coast Survey, Chart 540, "Rockaway Inlet and Western Park of Jamaica
Bay," 1878; U.S. Geological Survey, Brooklyn Quad, 1900; U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey (USC&GS),
Chart 542, "Jamaica Bay and Rockaway Inlet," 1911; 1926; 1940.
20 DuBois, 78; Brooklyn Daily Eagle, April 29, 1907, Clipping File ("Barren Island"), QPL.
21 Brooklyn Daily Eagle, December 3, 1905; December 12, 1905; April 29, 1907, all in Clipping File
("Barren Island"), QPL; Article, Unknown newspaper, December ?, 1905, Clipping File, JBU.
22 Brooklyn Daily Eagle, December 12, 1905; April 29, 1907; USC&GS, Chart-No. 542, 1911;
Department of Docks, Annual Report, 1910, 334, 477, 676.
23 "Around the Peconics," Harpers New Monthly Magazine (October 1878), excerpts in John Beard (ed.),
Blue Water Views of Old New York; Including Long Island and the Jersey Shore (Barre, Mass.:
Scrimshaw Press, 1970), 83; Dubois, 78.
24 Article, unknown newspaper, April 28, 1899, Clipping File, JBU; Brooklyn Daily Eagle, May 8, 1899;
May 26, 1899, Clipping File ("Barren Island"), QPL; Brooklyn Daily Eagle, January 16, 1919, Clipping File,
JBU.