NYC's Waterside Station (far left)—with its trio of distinctive smokestacks—once sat along the East River beside the United Nations (right). |
Years before I worked in New York City, I got a crash course in Manhattan geography courtesy of Marvel Comics.
Let me explain: the cities in DC comics—like Superman's Metropolis and Batman's Gotham City—are fictional places, but the heroes in the Marvel comics I read as a kid lived and worked in NYC—with many of its real-life locations providing the backdrop for their otherwise fantastical tales.
For instance, I didn't set foot inside New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art until 1988, but I'd "visited" it twelve years earlier courtesy of Spider-Man.
Thanks to those same comics, I knew the Fantastic Four lived in Midtown, Avengers Mansion was on the Upper East Side, and that Doctor Strange's Sanctum Santorum was down in Greenwich Village. Believe it or not, this information actually helped me navigate the city when I arrived there years later.
Amazing Spider-Man #89, 1970 |
I suppose that's why when I read the reports here and here about plans for Freedom Plaza on Manhattan's east side, I immediately thought of the very first time I saw the area—in the pages of Amazing Spider-Man #89.
Spidey spots Doc Ock at Waterside Station, ASM #89 |
Eighteen years later, while exploring United Nations Plaza along the East River for the first time, I instantly recognized the distinctive trio of smokestacks at nearby Waterside Generating Station as the location of Spidey's 1970 battle with Doc Ock (see the pic at the top of today's dispatch).
The former home of the Waterside Generating Station in NYC |
Waterside Station was decommissioned and demolished about four years after I left the Big Apple—you can read more about it here—and the site remained mostly undeveloped in the twenty years since until plans for Freedom Plaza were recently announced.
Proposed design for Freedom Plaza (left) along FDR Drive |
The development looks to be an impressive addition to Manhattan's East Side—and I'll admit I've got my fingers crossed that Spidey and Doc Ock might tussle there someday, too.
There's more to come in the next dispatch.
©2024 SummitCityScribe