Talk:Gowanus Canal

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Good article Gowanus Canal has been listed as one of the Engineering and technology good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can delist it, or ask for a reassessment.
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Bulletin: The next New York City meetup is Sunday June 1st.
Good article GA This article has been rated as GA-Class on the quality scale.
Mid This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the importance scale.

Contents

[edit] Getting to featured

This article nearly made it to featured on its submit to FAC; I think a few relatively small improvements could ensure an easy and successful resubmit.

  • The purview of this article should be a little clearer; exactly how far should it go beyond the canal to cover the surrounding neighborhood?
As it stands now, the article addresses not only the canal itself, but also the industry and community around it. I think the latter is just as interesting, if not more.


  • Association with the mob and body dumping- is it real or just urban legend? (but even urban legend deserves to be covered)
I added some references to books and documentaries that expand on this a little bit more. This is one of those things that most likely did happen, but is perpetuated as an "urban legend" today.


  • Modern community development- the "cruises", the Canoe Dredgers, artists etc. (I'd also like to have more on that funeral director's ideas)
I added links to the Gowanus Canoe Dredgers, the Urban Divers, and Gowanus Artists, as well as mentioned them in the article. --Howrealisreal 21:37, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
What about references to the Canal in pop culture, etc? For example, They Might Be Giants references it in their Venue Song "Brooklyn" singing, "Let's celebrate Brooklyn now, even the Gowanus Canal."72.130.21.164 23:35, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
  • Waterfront infrastructure context- piers, Erie Basin and Atlantic Basin (I'll be submitting a new short article on Atlantic Basin soon.)
  • The introduction should probably be somewhat longer; this would also solve the problem of the canal crossings image.
  • I've heard that the canal once acting as a definite border between the Irish and Italian neighborhoods; how else has it acted as a border rather than a means of connection?
  • barge activity - I think the last vestige has been regular semi-weekly oil shipments in recent years

These are just some semi-random ideas; what do others think?--Pharos 21:23, 9 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Refinery?

I bicycled over the canal this afternoon on the 9th Street bridge, on my way from Flatbush to the Columbia Street Pier and Plymouth Church. Oil refinery? I don't recall seeing one anywhere in NYC, much less one between Sunset Park and Red Hook. There's an oil terminal or two, if not on the canal then less than a mile to the southwest, but they just pump fuel out of barges and pump it into trucks. There's no fractionating column, catalytic reactor or other sign of a refinery. Jim.henderson 01:50, 11 November 2006 (UTC)


[edit] GA Re-Review and In-line citations

Members of the Wikipedia:WikiProject Good articles are in the process of doing a re-review of current Good Article listings to ensure compliance with the standards of the Good Article Criteria. (Discussion of the changes and re-review can be found here). A significant change to the GA criteria is the mandatory use of some sort of in-line citation (In accordance to WP:CITE) to be used in order for an article to pass the verification and reference criteria. Currently this article does not include in-line citations. It is recommended that the article's editors take a look at the inclusion of in-line citations as well as how the article stacks up against the rest of the Good Article criteria. GA reviewers will give you at least a week's time from the date of this notice to work on the in-line citations before doing a full re-review and deciding if the article still merits being considered a Good Article or would need to be de-listed. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact us on the Good Article project talk page or you may contact me personally. On behalf of the Good Articles Project, I want to thank you for all the time and effort that you have put into working on this article and improving the overall quality of the Wikipedia project. LuciferMorgan 02:45, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

As best I could I revised to use in-line citations. --Howrealisreal 21:49, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Gasoline manufactured

I notice the reference to oil refineries has disappeared, but the article still has a link to gas meaning gasoline. Isn't this improbable in a place that never had regular freight rail service? Bayonne makes gasoline, or formerly made it, but Bayonne has rail freight. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Jim.henderson (talk • contribs) 04:48, 6 January 2007 (UTC).

Must mean the three manufactured gas plants (syngas) that were on the Gowanus. The Metropolitan Gas Light Company site is the current Lowe's and Pathmark. The Citizen Works parcel is the "Public Place" site (between Huntington, Smith, 4th Street, and the canal); a housing development has been proposed for this space. The Fulton Municipal Gas Company site is the Thomas Greene Park and playground. These are pretty much brownfields now and there's debate about the past and ongoing remediation efforts. [1][2]--Howrealisreal 23:21, 29 August 2007 (UTC)