Ill-famed developer Robert Moses had to deal with a smelly dilemma ahead of the 1939 World’s Fair in New York.
Moses, then the commissioner of the Department of Parks and Recreation, wanted to beautify Rikers Island — a rancid, rat-filled city dump in the East River that once held nearly half of the city’s garbage.
One solution to the “filthy mess,” he said, was to build a tree nursery. But many of the young oaks, Norway maples and American elms the department planted died within the year, records show.
“The roots of these trees were hot, giving off a sour odor, and were black in color,” wrote then-Director of Horticulture David Schweizer, who took soil tests on Aug. 7, 1940.
“This, no doubt, was caused by the gases given off by the fermentation of the new fill.”
Department of Correction Commissioner Francis Lantry needed more land to house inmates on both Rikers and Hart Island, records show. The city used landfill to expand the island to over 500 acres, creating more surface area for detention centers while also solving the problem of overflowing waste on city streets.
Yet with the trash came the rats. In 1915 the city sent over dogs — including one particularly unlucky Irish terrier named Battle-axe Bill — to kill the vermin only to discover that the rodents were eating the pups, newspaper articles from the time show. Other accounts reveal that the land often caught fire.
Nearly 25 years later, Moses was told the land could be deadly — but he let the issue sink back into the history books.
“Too much work has been done on (the nursery) ... and too much publicity to allowed a few people suddenly to change their minds,” Moses wrote to an underling in August 1940 amid concerns of the dying trees. “(Get this) group of geniuses ... together again and reconsider.”