Crumbling cavern poses threat to Haverstraw street

Haverstraw History

1987-11-15

The brick works that once dominated the Hudson River shore in Rockland are gone. Beneath the homes, businesses and streets of Haverstraw village, however, are
testaments to those days.
Officials, residents and merchants agree that subterranean brick tunnel-like and cavern-like
structures in the downtown and waterfront areas most likely were 19th-century drain pipes and coal storage areas.
But the same people also offer more imaginative uses for the defunct structures, including Civil War slave-hiding and Prohibition rum-running.
Meanwhile, village officials said at least one of the old caverns is crumbling, and could bring First Street down with it.
Victor Castro rents an apartment in the First Street home that has a cavern beneath it and the street. "Someday, a car or truck is going to go right through that thing, and I don't want to be here when it happens," he said.
The red brick underground dome is about 30 feet wide and is 10 feet high in the center. Above it is a chute that has been sealed.
Castro said a horse-drawn carriage probably dumped coal into the cavern through the chute that had a manhole-like cover in the center- of First Street. He said the home probably was heated by a coal furnace stoked by slaves.
Don Boycott, village building inspector, examined the street above the cavern with village engineer
P. Joseph Corless.
"The road is sinking," Boycott said. They have recommended to the village board that the village
attorney research the village's liability in the matter and have the owner fill in the cavern.
"If the owner does not do it in a reasonable period of time, 30 days," reads a letter from Boycott and
Corless to the village board, "the village should authorize the department of public works to do same and put the cost on the property tax."
The village board sent Corless and Boycott to inspect the street after the homeowner, Ann Poor of New City, complained to the board that truck traffic on the
street was deteriorating the cavern and asked that something be done.
Village Historian Don DeNoyelles said he remembers a
- bootlegger who used to keep contraband in a similar cavern. The smuggler was an eel fisherman who used to get apple jack deliveries via ships to his riverfront
home, he said.
"I'd go down and buy a couple of bottles once in a while myself," the 83-year-old Haverstraw native said. "You could sit on his back porch and eat smoked eels and drink," he said. "But don't try to get up too fast." While supervising community service workers removing vines
from a brick wall off Dock Street by Emeline Park last year, Boycott uncovered a brick that had the year 1885 chiseled into it. Two brick drainpipes, each about 4 feet in diameter, meet at an outlet beneath the stone. They
had drained runoff from the home above it on First Street, Boycott said.
Someone sealed the drains because children used to play in them, he said. First Street resident Jack Berrian said that as a child he used to play in the drains. "They don't go anywhere," he reported.
Village Trustee Ralph Cordisco said he had heard about the coal bins, but also had heard about tunnels in the village used to hide slaves who came off boats in the Hudson.
Steve Girard, manager of Henry Adler's Sons bar on Broadway in the village, said that beneath the 109-year-old bar is a coal cavern that does not extend beneath the street, but has iron doors that once opened onto the
sidewalk for fuel deliveries. "It's huge, all brick, and beautiful," he said. "It's great workmanship.
Somebody really put some time into it."
A number of other downtown area businesses and homes that used to be businesses have the caverns, Girard added.
Jack Kleiner, owner of Rosenberg ON & Son Inc., electrical
suppliers on Main Street in the village, said his building, constructed in 1915, has three coal caverns such as Girard described.
Each is about 5 feet high and 4 feet deep, Kleiner said. He
keeps extra store shelves in the caverns. "I've noticed no deterioration. It's like they were made yesterday."