Friday, August 5, 2022 – ENJOY THE DELICIOUS STORY, IF OYSTERS ARE YOUR THING

By admin

FROM THE ARCHIVES

746th Edition

OUR OYSTERS

STEPHEN BLANK

I don’t usually write about subjects that have been well covered elsewhere. Mark Kurlansky’s, The Big Oyster, his history of oysters in New York, is really a good read. But the book came out almost 20 years ago, so let’s take a look at what’s happened to oysters in our fair city since then and what we can (and can’t) expect in the future.   Dear reader, I confess that I love oysters – raw, ultra-fresh, with just a drop of lemon juice – none of the wicked hot sauce that disguises the glorious taste of the sea, which is why we eat them. And yes, I’ve heard the joke – “The bravest man in history was the guy who first ate an oyster.”   New York was Oyster Heaven.    We are told that 350 square miles of oyster beds lined the lower Hudson. Some biologists estimate that our harbor contained half of the world’s oysters.  Archaeological evidence gathered from tremendous mounds of oyster shells (“middens”) indicates that our oysters were not only plentiful, but they were huge. Shells from these middens measure up to 10 inches, and early European travelers describe the shellfish as being about a foot in length. So big that the English novelist William Makepeace Thackeray wrote that eating a New York oyster was like eating a baby.

The Landing of Henrick Hudson, based on a painting by Robert Wise, Gilder Lehman Collection’   The Dutch hoped to find pearls among all these oysters, but, alas, not to be. Only good for eating and for some construction – the lime used in Trinity Church was made from ground-up oyster shells.   And New York became the world’s Oyster Capital.   Local varieties included Blue Points, Saddle Rocks, Rockaways, Lynnhavens, Cape Cods, Buzzard Bays, Cotuits and Shrewsburys. People ate them raw on the half shell, as oyster pie, oyster patties, oyster box stew, Oysters Pompadour, Oysters Algonquin, Oysters a la Netherland, a la Newberg, a la Poulette, roasted on toast, broiled in shell, served with cocktail sauce and stewed in milk or cream. They ate fish with oyster sauce, poultry stuffed with oysters, oysters fried with bacon, and oysters escalloped, fried, fricasseed, and pickled. Oystering, from gathering to marketing, was a major New York City industry.   Early on, our oyster became world-renowned. Kurlansky writes, “Before the 20th century, when people thought of New York, they thought of oysters. This is what New York was to the world—a great oceangoing port where people ate succulent local oysters from their harbor. Visitors looked forward to trying them. New Yorkers ate them constantly. They also sold them by the millions.” In the 19th century, when Europe and America were in the throes of an oyster craze, tons of oysters were shipped abroad from New York and many more carried to the far reaches of our country. (Pickled oysters were a huge export product.)

Oyster Stands In Fulton Market (1870) https://www.nypl.org/blog/2011/06/01/history-half-shell-intertwined-story-new-york-city-and-its-oysters    New Yorkers dined on oysters in restaurants (we are told that Delmonico’s popularized oysters raw on the half shell). In oyster cellars (the equivalent of our papaya bar, but most were seedier and often much rougher). In Canal Street oyster cellars, the price was All You Can Eat for 6 Cents (but if you pushed this too far, you might find a bad oyster slipped into the pile). Oysters were our street food, peddled at all hours from pushcarts, along with hot corn, peanuts, and buns. Floating oyster markets were built that could tie up along the Hudson and East Rivers. By the 1880’s the barges had become two stories high, with elaborate ornaments

Thomas Hogan. “Up Among the Nineties.” From Harper’s Weekly, August 15, 1868. Library, Bard Graduate Center.   Oysters were the supremely democratic food: Rich and poor New Yorkers slurped the same oysters, often from the same pushcart. Although not many could keep up with Diamond Jim Brady, the legendary New York gourmand, who started his pretheater dinner with three dozen. It was claimed that the very poorest New Yorkers “had no other subsistence than oysters and bread”. Fortunately, oysters are nutritious—rich in protein, phosphorus, iodine, calcium, iron, and vitamins A, B, and C.

Nicolino Calyo. “New York Street Cries: The Oyster-Stand,” 1840–44. Watercolor on paper. Museum of the City of New York   But it was too good to last. New Yorkers overfished (the Dutch had attempted to regulate the oyster catch) and, of course, polluted the oysters’ watery homes. In 1900, we harvested a billion oysters from the lower Hudson. In 1921, the New York City Health Department closed the Jamaica Bay oyster beds, then responsible for 80 million oysters a year, due to fears of food borne illness, including typhoid. From there the end came fast, and six years later, in 1927, the last New York City oyster bed was closed in Raritan Bay.   But change may be on the way. Our waters are much cleaner and wildlife – birds, fish, whales – are returning. Maybe oysters, too.   Just a bit of background here. Oysters reproduce unromantically. Male oysters release sperm into the water, hopefully meets up with eggs released by female oysters. Those that connect become “spat” and spend the next three weeks or so drifting on currents and tides feeding on phytoplankton or microscopic algae. They will develop a thin shell and a slimy foot to help find a location in which to stick itself in place and settle down – an old oyster shell works fine. Once a baby oyster has found a perfect spot, it will secrete a liquid cement-like substance that fixes or glues itself in place to spend the rest of its life in one place.   The sex life of an oyster is striking. Most spat are males with some individuals transforming into females after the first or second spawning. Oysters may go back and forth between sexes several times during their lifetime. (One article says that female oysters are just older male oysters – “their gender is very fluid.”) This all sets the mind to wandering.. An oyster can live between 10 to 20 years, but most will only survive about four or five years. Which years do you think it likes the best? Our waters are now clean enough that oysters have reappeared here and there around the lower Hudson. Spat were discovered living on a healthy Eastern oyster shell attached to a mushroom anchor in the Navesink River in New Jersey; a large living oyster reef in the Hudson River was removed near the Tappan Zee Bridge before construction began on the new bridge; oysters can now be found growing in Upper New York Bay. Around the Statue of Liberty are some of the plumpest and fastest growing in the whole of New York Harbor. But while welcome, this is still small stuff.   The biggest oyster restoration effort is the Billion Oyster Project, a recovery program from the non-profit New York Harbor Foundation that hopes to restore oyster populations throughout the tidal waters of New York City. The project began in 2012, and so far has returned around 47 million live oysters to the harbor, primarily around Governor’s Island and at the mouth of the Bronx River. The Project is affiliated with the New York Harbor School and teaches New York City teenagers about maritime vocations and ecology by way of oyster restoration.   The Project begins by collecting oyster shells from restaurants around the City. Fifty-five restaurants donate their discarded oyster shells to BOP which hauls them to Governors Island. Once there, they’re dumped at the very end of the pile, where they’ll sit for years. The shells get rained on, snowed on, crisped in the sun and blown around by the wind. Insects pick them clean as possible which ultimately makes them receptive to oyster spat which latch on and grow. The cleaned shells are moved to Billion Oyster Project’s hatchery at the Urban Assembly New York Harbor School, a public high school on Governors Island that offers technical and vocational training in the marine sciences. In an aquaculture classroom’s hatchery, student-grown oysters produce larvae in an artificially induced springtime environment. Each larvae grows its foot and then is moved to a tank full of the shells. This phase is critical: If larvae can’t find a place to attach, they die. One reclaimed shell can house 10 to 20 new live oysters, depending on shell size. The students tend to the spat and recycled shells in floating cages that serve as breeding grounds for the oysters before they are returned to the harbor

https://www.billionoysterproject.org/reefs

https://www.billionoysterproject.org/reefs

Billion Oyster Project has collected more than 1 million pounds of oyster shells so far. Courtesy of Agata Poniatowski

Oysters are not just food. They’re also habitat builders. When oysters join up, they build an “oyster reef,” diverse ecosystems that protect coastlines from the damaging effects of wave action from storms. Oyster reefs provide habitat and shelter for many marine organisms. Our own coral reefs.
 
Oysters are also filters that naturally clean waters. Oysters use their gills to absorb oxygen and strain food out of the water. One adult can strain plankton and organic matter at a rate of up to 50 gallons per day (or 1500 times its body volume). A healthy oyster reef contributes significantly to overall water clarity in the estuary.
 
So good to welcome back to New York harbor our friend the oyster. But we’re not going to be able to eat them for a long time. Still too much sewage for the industrious fellow to clean and in any case, they don’t filter out a bunch of toxic substances.
A parting thought. I’ve just written on flooding in New York. Odd that some decades out, the oyster may triumph over people, as more and more of the city is under water, with more lovely places for spat to rest and grow.
 
Yours, as ever,
 
Stephen Blank
RIHS
July 28, 2022

FRIDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY

IN MEMORY OF RON VASS,
WHO PASSED AWAY ON WEDNESDAY
RON AND HIS LATE WIFE FAY WERE
WONDERFUL MEMBERS OF OUR COMMUNITY.
ALWAYS ACTIVE IN THE ’80’s and ’90’s, RON AND FAY
WERE AT THE FOREFRONT OF OUR NEW AND YOUNG ISLAND.

SEND YOUR MEMORIES TO:
rooseveltislandhistory@gmail.com

THURSDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY

NEW AMSTERDAM THEATRE
IN ITS PRE-DISNEY DAYS

LAURA HUSSEY, ED LITCHER, HARA REISER, ARON EISENPREISS, GLORIA HERMAN, JAY JACOBSON

FROM ARON:The New Amsterdam Theatre on 42nd Street.  Wow, what an interesting history (see wikipedia!), and literally saved by Disney.  The 11-story building on the 42nd St side is an office building as well as the theater entrance, and the theater itself is on the 41st St side with a much larger footprint.  At one time home of the famous Ziegfeld Follies, later NBC broadcast studios used part of the space.  The photo’s in the wikipedia article and says it’s from 1905 so that would be the original appearance.  Neat!

FROM ED:Photo of the New Amsterdam Theater 42nd Street NYC Circa 1905.  One of the oldest surviving Broadway venues, the New Amsterdam was built from 1902 to 1903 to designs by Herts & Tallant and was opened on opening on October 26, 1903.

FROM JAY:Still going strong on 42nd Street, the New Amsterdam Theater is what a theater interior should look like. I think it is now playing “Aladdin”

Text by Judith Berdy
Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS
Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website
Edited by Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff

All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island
Historical Society unless otherwise indicated:

WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
STEPHEN BLANK

Gwynne Hogan, Millions of baby oysters get a new briny home off the shores of Hudson River Park, NYT, JULY 21, 2022

https://www.nyharbornature.com/blog/new-york-harbor-oysters-are-reproducing
Mark Kurlansky, CITY LORE, When the Oyster Was Their World NYT June 24, 2001
Mark Kurlansky, The Big Oyster; History on the Half Shell (2006)
https://www.nypl.org/blog/2011/06/01/history-half-shell-intertwined-story-new-york-city-and-its-oysters
https://untappedcities.com/2021/02/03/history-new-york-city-oysters/
https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/16/tech/billion-oyster-project/index.html
https://www.insidehook.com/article/news-opinion/billion-oyster-project-volunteer-opportunities

FUNDING PROVIDED BY ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE GRANTS CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE BEN KALLOS DISCRETIONARY FUNDING THRU DYCD

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rooseveltislandhistory@gmail.com