The Sand Washer

                               

I was looking for some negatives in my collection, and stumbled across this image.  It is a contact print - one of four on a sheet of photographic paper.  This is the Sand Washer, across the harbor in Port Washington, in the sand pits.  One of the little known facts of Long Island history is its contribution to the building of New York City. The high quality sand found on Long Island was used for over a century in making the concrete for New York’s skyscrapers, sidewalks, subways and bridges. Between 1870 and 1920, workers were drawn to Long Island from all over Europe to mine this resource. By 1930, 100 million tons of sand had been delivered from Port Washington to the metropolitan New York area.  The washer was the principal structure in the sand-mining process. Here the sand was washed with spring water and moved on conveyor belts onto metal screens where the sand and gravel where sorted. From the washer, the material was moved on a conveyor belt to a tunnel that went underneath West Shore Road onto docks and poured into waiting barges in Hempstead Harbor. At its peak, 50 barges a day would be towed by tugboats out of Hempstead Harbor to deliver sand to New York City where it was mixed to make concrete.  This sandpit closed in 1989 and I would go over and photograph some of the remains, because I love to photograph industrial ruins.