Where Is Wilson's Repair Shop Great Gatsby
Eckleburg'southward Lair: A Walk Through F. Scott Fitzgerald's Valley of Ashes
- By Levi Asher
- February 28, 2022
- American, Fiction, Jazz Age, Nature, New York Metropolis, Postmodernism
- xix Comments
A couple of years ago I wrote a blog post titled In Gatsby's Tracks: Locating the Valley of Ashes in a 1924 Photo, detailing my search for some exact locales described by F. Scott Fitzgerald in The Great Gatsby. Using the novel's text and a zoomable historical map of Queens, New York, I was able to conclude that some vivid scenes described in the book took identify at the triangle where a railroad and a street converge just east of the Van Wyck Expressway and south of the boondocks of Flushing, Queens. George and Myrtle Wilson's auto garage would have stood at this spot, and the haunting sign for eye doctor T. J. Eckleburg would have been visible at this spot too.
This blog mail service has become i of the most pop pages on Literary Kicks, and since I now realize that many people share my fascination with Fitzgerald'south "valley of ashes" I'd similar to show you the photos I took while I was researching this locale, which I'd never bothered to put up before.
This pocket-sized industrial neighborhood that sprouts underneath the Van Wyck Expressway overpass offers a unique urban vista that few people will ever see, though information technology's merely a few steps away from CitiField, the baseball stadium where the New York Mets play (CitiField replaced Shea Stadium, which was in the same spot) and, slightly farther to the southwest, the United states of america Open Tennis complex that comes live every August for 1 of the world's four Grand Slam tournaments. These stadiums are role of cute Flushing Meadows Corona Park, my favorite park in New York City, and a longtime literary inspiration for me. Flushing Meadows Corona Park was too the site of New York's great 1939 and 1964-1965 World'southward Fairs, congenital on the grounds cleared subsequently the trash-called-for operation described then memorably in the The Great Gatsby closed.
The entire complex of Flushing Meadows Park is west of the Van Wyck Superhighway, and westward of Flushing Creek. The spot where George and Myrtle Wilson's machine garage stood is east of the highway and creek, an uninviting and anarchic tangle of small industrial streets. Visitors to the park or the baseball or tennis stadium are not encouraged to cross into this expanse, and few ever do.
An auto garage stands today on Maple Avenue, just east of the railroad/street juncture, exactly where the Wilson garage might take been. The town of Flushing, Queens now has a big Asian population, and the garage is today called "Dragon Automobile Centre Inc.". Telephone call me fanciful, merely I like to imagine that in 1924 Fitzgerald imagined (or saw a prototype for) the Wilson garage at this precise spot.
An oblique angle on The Great Gatsby's symbolism can be discovered in the fact that the triangular plot of land formed by the juncture of the Long Island Railroad tracks and Sanford Avenue at present serves as New York City'southward central marketplace and foundry for the manufacture of large signs and billboards. The unabridged triangle is occupied by a set of businesses collectively known every bit "Sign City", along with a big Domicile Depot box store and a vast parking lot.
I can just imagine what semiotic-minded literary postmodernists will brand of the knowledge — never revealed anywhere else, every bit far as I know — that the spot where Jay Gatsby and Nick Carraway saw a sign advertising heart doctor T. J. Eckleburg's services might accept been the spot where the sign was being manufactured, not the sign'southward permanent dwelling.
Signs are everywhere in this hidden, grimy department of southward Flushing, Queens. There are also large billboards permanently installed for viewing from the Van Wyck State highway for gambling casinos in Yonkers, Majuscule Ane banking company, and Home Depot (this Abode Depot sign is famous to baseball fans, at least National League fans, since it has been visible for decades over the outfield at Mets games).
Here's a view of the main route that crosses the creek, the road that Jay Gatsby, Tom and Daisy Buchanan, Nick Carraway and Jordan Bakery would have taken for their fateful jaunt to the Plaza Hotel, and for the drunken ride back to West Egg during which Daisy Buchanan hitting and killed Myrtle Wilson. Today, the road is shadowed past the overpass for the Van Wyck Expressway, a busy highway that connects Kennedy and LaGuardia airports and did not exist in Fitzgerald'due south time.
The CitiField baseball game stadium tin exist seen beyond the creek hither.
Looking farther south across the creek, the Arthur Ashe stadium at the Billie Jean King The states Tennis Association complex can exist seen here:
Is in that location literary significance to exist found today by walking this industrial neighborhood, the gateway to the long-vanished valley of ashes? I recall in that location is, because the decrepit streets offer the same contrasts to New York City's social pretensions today that they offered in 1924, when Fitzgerald conceived his virtually important volume. This unnamed neighborhood is the spot where civilization breaks downwardly, where the unknown people scurry and toil. A passage through this "valley" is a passage through tawdry truth: this disarray is what underlies our proper world. And, as in 1924, it holds its own strange beauty, amidst the graffiti-strewn walls, concrete pillars, grimy factories, polluted streams, quiet walkways, winding train tracks and waving weeds.
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Where Is Wilson's Repair Shop Great Gatsby,
Source: https://litkicks.com/EcklebergsLair/
Posted by: pennytimans.blogspot.com
19 Responses
This is great, Levi.
I loved
This is great, Levi.
I loved the original post, and this is a fantastic follow-up. Maybe information technology's the History Major in me, just I'1000 a sucker for these kinds of ties to the past.
Hullo Levi,
I honey stuff similar
Hi Levi,
I dear stuff like this. It's a kind of natural history.
I am reminded of this website I saw and then long ago. Anybody here should check information technology out if they don't know about it.
Levi, a very interesting
Levi, a very interesting photographic–and virtually cinematic–tour of part of The Keen Gatsby. Interesting how, having read the novel a long time agone, I just think the glamorous sides of the novel, with the lavish parties. The movie seemed to focus on those also. These images fill out so many other scenes of the novel.
I once dragged three visiting
I once dragged iii visiting Dutch visitors through winding streets and back roads looking for the green calorie-free at the cease of Daisy'south dock. They were vaguely amused by my search, but when, while continuing in some loftier weeds at the border of the bay, I said, "I think I've found information technology" they were relieved that the search was over. I don't know if any of them had ever even read Gatsby, but I was teaching information technology at an American High School in Kingdom of the netherlands, and I told my students almost my search. Many years afterwards, I met upwards with i of them, and he said that what he remembered all-time nearly his year in my AP English course was the story I told virtually looking for the light-green light at the end of Daisy's dock. I besides told them that I had been born and brought upwards in the valley of ashes (Hempstead, Long Island) even though your blog and map shows that this could not have been true. I loved your piece of work. Thanks. Irene in Kingdom of the netherlands
I read Gatsby in highschool
I read Gatsby in high schoolhouse 42+ years ago and am just re-reading it at present. The gritty industrial neighborhood immediately east of CitiField does have a name: It's chosen Willets Point. The sign fabricator yous mention is located in Flushing proper, as is the garage on Maple Avenue.The road next to the LIRR is called Perimeter Rd. presumably because it was the perimeter of the World's Fair.
Thanks, Andrew. A couple of
Cheers, Andrew. A couple of clarifications I'd similar to add …
Yes, Willets Point is an extremely gritty industrial (auto parts/repair) neighborhood only east of CitiField that resembles the Valley of Ashes as described in Gatsby. And Willets Point is very close to the spot described in Gatsby. All the same, just to be articulate, they are unlike spots. Willets Point is west of Flushing Creek and n of Roosevelt Avenue. The spot I'm describing as the site of George Wilson's garage is eastward of Flushing Creek and southward of Roosevelt Avenue.
Also, just for everyone'south interest — that sign fabricator, aka Sign City, is now closed! Patently the whole expanse of southward Flushing by the creek is currently beingness developed and "improved" right at present.
Thank you for your piece of work, Levi!
Cheers for your work, Levi! The Valley of Ashes is so wonderfully haunting to me, besides. I beloved when new information comes to light most subjects considered long wearied.
I piece of work as an environmental
I work as an ecology investigator & geologist. I utilize old city directories & Sanborn Fire Insurance maps to hep decide the sources of groundwater contamination, often old gas stations. The garage in the photo looks like a gas station from that era….
That is good information to
That is good data to have, Paula, cheers!
Both this and your web log post
Both this and your blog postal service from a couple of years ago were among the first things I establish while searching the web after seeing the latest Gatsby flick over the weekend. I think yous're wrong about the location, though. In that location are online resource that clearly show the only road crossing of Flushing Creek was at Northern Blvd. You accept been likewise quick to dismiss that location because of a few words in the novel that say the tracks approached the road and were parallel to it for a curt distance (paraphrasing). Onetime LIRR diagrams, also online, support the idea that the (so) Whitestone branch did run parallel, at a distance of approximately 400 anxiety away, to Northern Blvd for about a quarter mile before curving and crossing it at just about a 90 caste angle.
Roosevelt Ave did not cross the creek in the mid-1920s, and going southward from Northern Blvd, the next vehicle crossing was in the vicinity of what is, today, the area south of the LIE and due north of Meadow Lake.
I dear finding things on quondam maps and I can tell that you lot practice, also, Levi. Delight take my post every bit constructive criticism which is the intent with which I get in. I take put in a valid email address, delight respond if yous would like to compare notes. It should exist good for a few more blog postings.
Hullo Dan — well, information technology'south funny to
Hello Dan — well, it's funny to hear you say that I am also quick to dismiss the Northern Blvd. route "because of a few words in the novel that say the tracks approached the road and were parallel to information technology for a short distance". But what else other than a few words in a short novel (all of "Gatsby", really, is a few words) do I have to become on? The words are conspicuously written.
Simply that's not all I'thousand basing my findings on. In that location are 2 more things which I mention in the article:
1) If the traveling party in "Gatsby" took the Northern Blvd. route, they would accept passed direct through the town of Flushing, which was in 1924 already a populous and well-kept village. The Northern Blvd. road passes right through the center of the town. Merely Gatsby describes Wilson's garage equally if it were a lonely outpost, far from the center of whatsoever boondocks … an edge settlement in an underpopulated industrial expanse. That cannot peradventure describe a passage through the main department of Flushing, which would take taken the travelers past well-dressed people, overnice houses, business concern offices, restaurants and stores. It seems much more probable to draw the industrial area alongside the southern route.
2) the vista of the Valley of Ashes itself. If you lot drive on Northern Blvd, the nigh hitting thing you see is the Long Isle Sound, a wide body of water to the north. The presence of a trunk of water doesn't seem to match Fitzgerald's description of a vast unbroken land of ashes. And, as you encounter on the photograph, the eye of the Valley of Ashes is the southern passage. Northern Blvd. did not go through the Valley of Ashes, but rather stood due north of it.
Only, now, there is some validity to what you lot say nigh the possible absence of a southern road crossing, and I already acknowledge it in my original article. It's non clear that the southern passage was a road crossing at all. Information technology's conspicuously a railroad crossing, and there'southward a curious convergence of a railroad and a driving road that may or may not point a drawbridge that can concord both trains and cars. I wish I knew whether or not information technology was possible to bulldoze a car across this bridge. Information technology does seem likely that, as you say, this was not a road crossing at all, in which cases the drivers would have crossed on the bridge below Northern Blvd. by automobile and taken Willets Point Blvd. south until they reached the southern passage through the Valley of Ashes.
This is possible. All the same, in this instance the passage described in the novel conspicuously departs from reality, because the Willets Betoken northern passage is clearly not a convergence of a railroad and a road for cars. But let'southward recollect the principal question I'm trying to reply: where is George and Myrtle Wilson's garage? If it'southward true that Fitzgerald imagined a automobile passage that doesn't exist, the purpose is clearly to allow his characters to drive through a territory that would have been familiar to Fitzgerald from taking the train across the southern passage. We tin can easily imagine that Fitzgerald got to know the area past looking out the window of the train, and peradventure exiting the train at the station (as Carraway and Buchanan do in the novel) and walking around. I retrieve the only thing that'due south completely clear is that here, where the railroad train went through and stopped at a modest station, is the southern passage, where the two roads converge. Therefore, this is where the Wilson garage was, and this is where Myrtle was killed by the yellow car. Exercise you really call up it'due south possible that George Wilson's garage was in the center of downtown Flushing? I think my main betoken stands, fifty-fifty if we have to accommodate Fitzgerald'south impossible geography, that the triangle in Southward Flushing that still stands today (and which was, until very recently, a decorated center of sign manufacturing) is the spot where Myrtle was killed.
Let me know what y'all recollect of my logic hither … thank you.
Hi, Levi, I apologize for the
Hi, Levi, I apologize for the filibuster in my response; my schedule has been chaotic this calendar week.
I did some more excavation during the week and found a lot of interesting things on the web. Someone else wrote a blog entry on this exact same subject at the cease of 2009 which can be found here http://www.architakes.com/?p=4344
About a third of the style down on that page is a map taken from a 2002 book, "F. Scott Fitzgerald'south The Swell Gatsby: A Literary Reference", edited by Bruccoli. Something else for me to search out and read. The map shows several unlike "probable" locations for where Wilson's mythical garage might have been located. The location that I ever idea "best" was the 1 on the east side of the Flushing River/Creek on the south side of Northern Blvd. The author of the weblog piece, though, prefers locations on Northern Blvd west of the river and says, "These blocks of Northern Boulevard are certainly the location of whatever existent building that might have inspired Wilson's garage."
Here are a few images I have put together using a mapping program I'm quite fond of http://imgur.com/a/s1sjJ/all
In the annotated pictures I labeled the previously mentioned blogger's favored locations for Wilson's garage every bit A1 and A2. B1 is e'er where I envisioned the garage to be (that information technology's besides on the map from the 2002 book is coincidence). C1 is another location indicated on the map south of present-day Roosevelt Blvd (whose bridge beyond the river was begun in 1923 just didn't open until 1927) and north of the LIRR bridge that crosses the river on its way to Port Washington. L1 represents your preffered location on Sanford at the corner of Maple.
I spent a few hours on the website of the New York Public Library this week. Here are just a few of the really nifty old photos I constitute at that place:
http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47dd-ab36-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99
http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47dd-784b-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99
http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47dd-77ad-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99
http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47dd-7801-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99
http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47dd-77ff-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99
http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47dd-760f-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99
At the end of the 24-hour interval I think the question, "Where was Tom Wilson's garage located?", has no one true and accurate answer. There are as well many departures from factual geography in Fitzgerald's text to pinpoint a putative location. All the hypotheses can't be correct. Just they tin hands all be wrong. Odds are Fitzgerald concocted a mashup in his head of locations in and around the valley of ashes for the location of Wilson'southward garage. Information technology cannot take simultaneously been in the many dissimilar locations people have been suggesting for information technology over the years.
Dan — WOW! These are bully
Dan — WOW! These are great finds.
I did not know well-nigh this ArchiTakes article, and am tickled to find a different web log post with such a similar mission to my own (though, on commencement glance, his conclusions are rather dissimilar than mine). I'm going to report this stuff in particular and respond in depth.
Thanks, and it'due south prissy to meet another researcher as obsessive equally I am …
Some other tidbit of information
Another tidbit of information I discovered, unrelated to the present topic, is the provenance of the U-Haul building on College Pt Blvd. My earliest memories of this building are from watching Mets games on Television receiver or sitting in the stands at Shea Stadium. Dorsum then information technology had a sign that read, "Servall Zippers". Apparently it was originally built as a furniture factory for W & J Sloane. That name is clear on some of the old photos. I always thought the edifice off in the distance over the eye field fence with the clock belfry was an quondam Flushing urban center hall or some such municipal edifice. I estimate an upscale furniture maker will have to do.
First, Dan, about the U-Haul
First, Dan, about the U-Haul sign and the clock tower … oh yeah, I was besides at Shea Stadium many times and I remember it well — and, aye, too on TV when the Mets were on. You know, I call back my whole fascination with Flushing Meadows Park and Flushing Creek (and with the Gatsby locale) originates with the Mets. Maybe that influenced you lot besides.
Now … having spent some time with this ArchiTakes article and these maps and photos, information technology seems merely every bit clear as e'er to me that everybody is missing the obvious past locating the Wilson motorcar garage on Northern Blvd. That is the single presumption that everybody makes, and in one case you permit go of this presumption, everything falls into place. The author of this ArchiTakes article takes it as his starting point that the area must exist the Willets Signal Fe Triangle, and he has to ignore many other features mentioned in "Neat Gatsby" to hold his theory together.
I think yous're right that there is no unmarried location for Wilson's garage that meets every single one of the facts about the location suggested by "Gatsby". These are:
i) the location is near the middle of the Valley of Ashes, and offers an astonishing view of the ash piles
2) the location is due east of Flushing Creek
3) a road and a railroad track converge at this location, and a railroad station is nearby
iv) a drawbridge that allows both railroad and automobile traffic is west of the location
5) the neighborhood is desolate and forlorn, dominated by the sight of the gigantic ash-moving functioning
6) in that location are billboards at this spot
Okay — and so "Gatsby" is a novel and in that location'southward no reason to remember that whatsoever bodily spot nigh Flushing Creek matches all 6 of these features. I agree with that. Only my theory — that the spot is the industrial triangle south of the town of Flushing, where DeLong Artery and Sanford Avenue and Maple Avenue all come across — matches 5 of the 6 above facts. The only i it doesn't match is #4, because apparently in 1924 this bridge was but a railroad bridge, and a car could non drive beyond information technology.
The diverse Northern Boulevard theories, meanwhile, contradict at to the lowest degree 3 of the points — #1, #3 and #5.
Regarding indicate #1 – Northern Boulevard is not the heart of the Valley of Ashes, equally you meet in photographs. Driving on Northern Boulevard, you would see the Valley of Ashes in the distance to the s, and the blue waters of the Long Island Audio to the north. I just don't think Fitzgerald was describing an aquatic vista in his descriptions of the Valley of Ashes.
#3 — again, my spot is exactly where a railroad and a driving road converge. The Northern Boulevard spot cannot be described in this mode.
#5 — as I mentioned in my previous comment, Northern Boulevard goes through the centre of Flushing and would not accept resembled the desolate, forlorn scene described in "Gatsby". The "ArchiTakes" article really bends over backwards to deal with this problem:
"While this section of Northern Boulevard was more populated on the 1926 map than Fitzgerald's "three shop Main Street," he might have pared abroad his garage's neighbors to give information technology a Hopperesque isolation."
Okay, he *might* take done this — or he might have been describing the actual desolate surface area that did exist at the southern location I've identified, which was at the centre of the Valley of Ashes.
I'll call #6 a draw: there were billboards at Northern Boulevard. Just, remarkably, there is special evidence of billboards at the southern location, because this is an industrial area known equally "Sign Metropolis" where billboards are manufactured! True, I haven't proven that this location was used for sign manufacturing in the 1920s — but New York City's industrial zones practice tend to have aboriginal roots, and I think it's likely that there was a billboard manufacturer at this spot in 1924. I will try to find out (and if you can find out anything about this, please do).
I recall we are all probable to imagine these novelistic scenes where we desire to imagine them. The author of this ArchiTakes article seems very intent on identifying the Gatsby location with the Willets Indicate Iron Triangle, which is an fifty-fifty worse theory because this also places the location west of Flushing Creek, contradicting bespeak #2.
Well, this merely goes to show how stubbornly nosotros cling to our theories, and I know I'm stubbornly clinging to mine too. But I desire to mention that, when I began this inquiry, I had no preconceptions at all. I had no reason to think that the spot was or wasn't nearly Northern Boulevard. I had never even heard of DeLong or Maple or Sanford Avenues, and didn't know such a place as Sign City existed — the outset time I found out that this area existed was when I went looking for the Gatsby location.
I came to my conclusion in the most scientific fashion I could, purely past looking at the evidence. I found a location that matches 5 of the half-dozen points. No other theory matches 5 or even 4 of the 6 points. So, can't we consider this question solved — at least as well solved as it will e'er be?
Ah! If you desire to utilise a
Ah! If you lot desire to employ a "best fit" methodology and score the possible candidate locations based on a fixed set of criteria, all 6 points of which I pretty much agree with (except for #4 which I only half agree with), so you are certainly entitled to that methodology. I, on the other hand, prefer a more scientific approach which entails that a unmarried bad data bespeak is plenty to disprove any theory. In other words, a concatenation is only as strong as its weakest link, and if any of the criteria is non met then the whole thing must be discarded. I'm afraid nosotros volition accept to agree to disagree here.
Where is Port Roosevelt? Where is Partridge Hollow?
"We had passed Due west Egg and Port Roosevelt and Partridge Hollow, where in that location was blue water and a glimpse of crimson-belted ships and now we were treading a cobbled slum lined with the dark, undeserted saloons of the faded gilt nineteen-hundreds."
They are nowhere and they are everywhere inasmuch as FSF dreamt them upward in his head as fictional locations that served only to reflect his vision of what Nick encountered on his trips between Due west Egg and Manhattan. That the valley of ashes really did be does not necessarily mean that information technology existed exactly as he described information technology, or that any of the other places did. Nor does it mean, in my humble opinion, that Fitzgerald had any particular place in mind for Wilson's garage when he wrote well-nigh it. In Chapter 8 Myrtle'due south sister Catherine is brought to the garage and, "… when she arrived she was stupid with liquor and unable to understand that the ambulance had already gone to Flushing."
Gone to Flushing? Were they not already in Flushing to begin with?
I spent some hours over the last few days searching for some of FSF'southward earlier material every bit information technology might pertain to The Great Gatsby. Partridge Hollow doesn't exist but as Port Roosevelt doesn't be. Yous won't detect Partridge Hollow in Gatsby, but you will observe it mentioned in one of FSF's early drafts of the novel here http://pudl.princeton.edu/viewer.php?obj=fq977w07f#page/143/mode/1up
Fitzgerald's daughter, Scottie, donated some materials to Princeton in 1950 a decade after his death http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/annal/S36/94/02S50/alphabetize.xml?department=newsreleases
Princeton made some of those materials available online this year to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Fitzgerald's freshman twelvemonth in that location. Putting the digitized manuscripts, letters and galeys online also coincided, nicely enough, with the new film accommodation of The Corking Gatsby.
I read a good bargain of the early on manuscript and the galleys from Scribner's in search of additional textile that might lend further clues to the whereabouts of George Wilson'due south garage. I delightfully discovered the passage I quoted in a higher place – where Gatsby and Nick are driving to the City and stop for gas, and Myrtle pumps the gas! – while perusing the handwritten manuscript. I didn't find any farther clues of the sort I was looking for, but that was more than made up for by learning that FSF didn't type! He wrote all his text longhand – with a pencil – and his assistant then would type it all upward and frontward information technology on to his editor at Scribner's.
On a terminal annotation, if it was me making nonetheless some other TGG moving-picture show, I would fashion the locale of George's garage in this surface area: http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47dd-70bf-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99 The one-time Stiff's Causeway – which became Horace Harding Blvd and the Prevarication after that – traversed the southern edge of the valley of ashes, connecting Corona Ave on the west with Rodman St on the east. The bridge over the river in those pictures is about a mile and a half s of the old Northern Blvd drawbridge. Throw in a few billboards and that desolate location is exactly how I always envisioned the environs surrounding the garage. Desolate, bleak, dusty, ash heaps in close proximity, thin freestanding buildings, a junkyard next door… of course it only satisfies one of your six points, merely visually, for me anyhow, that identify perfectly captures the how I envision Wilson's service station and the surrounding area.
So nosotros go on, agreeing to disagree, in a friendly argue I trust! Peace, and check out that Princeton site, it gave me a huge dose of the "wow factor".
Dan, this is a bang-up
Dan, this is a nifty conversation and I'm really glad you lot're forcing me to reconsider and justify my basic approach here. You're a good author and, truth be told, probably a more tireless researcher (because I get bored hands) than I am. Yous're welcome to critique my web log posts anytime!
Now, here'due south the strange thing — based on your final comment, y'all are no longer placing George Wilson'southward garage on Northern Boulevard, and we are at present in general understanding about where the garage stood. Yes, equally you say, the most likely locale on George Wilson's garage is where the erstwhile Strong's Causeway stood, south of Flushing. Isn't this what I've been maxim all along? I take not mentioned Strong's Causeway specifically, because I'm not fully clear on exactly where Strong'south Causeway was, and it appears that this would have been west of Flushing Creek, which, as you say, completely contradicts many of the data points in the novel.
Even so, this general locale is my locale — south of Flushing, not *in* Flushing, an industrial neighborhood exterior of town, a spot where a visitor like Fitzgerald could imagine himself standing outside of civilized guild, a "wild west" right in the middle of New York City. That's the whole magic of the site — that it's in the centre of New York Metropolis and appears unreal and unworldly. And my betoken all along has been — this site must exist south of the town of Flushing, southward of Northern Boulevard — not *in* the genteel town of Flushing, non on the wide and well-traveled road known as Northern Boulevard.
Yous've also provided more keen prove to back this betoken upward with your quotation from Chapter 8 (which I had neglected to notice) that the ambulance had "gone to Flushing". Yes, exactly! If they were on Northern Boulevard, they would accept been in Flushing.
Now, I will happily bend to run into your point that my theory is not rock solid because of its unmarried flaw, that the span southward of Flushing is non both a railroad bridge and a car bridge, equally the bridge in the novel should be. Well, we both agree that a novel doesn't have to represent geographic reality, and shouldn't be expected to. I accept this point as a basic truth. Withal, we can and should and will look for correspondences between fiction and reality whenever we want, and on that note I'll suggest that Port Roosevelt would exist Port Washington — President Roosevelt, President Washington, get information technology? This is especially likely since the train through the Valley of Ashes is on the Port Washington line.
The purpose of this investigation has never been to pin facts inside "The Great Gatsby". The purpose is rather to effort to imagine the novel equally nosotros think F. Scott Fitzgerald may have imagined it. Since he paints the scenes of the Valley of Ashes so vividly, and since nosotros know he was traveling between Cracking Neck and Manhattan and passing through the real Valley of Ashes at the fourth dimension, information technology seems relevant to me to know what vistas he had seen that inspired the scenes in the novel.
And, the vista from Northern Boulevard through downtown Flushing would exist very different from the vista of the southern passage through the Strong'due south Causeway expanse and the DeLong/Sanford/Maple Avenue area. So I am now standing firm on my theory that the passage described in the volume seems to describe the southern passage, south of Flushing, in the general vicinity of the erstwhile Stiff'due south Causeway — not the northern passage through the heart of Flushing on Northern Blvd. And, Dan, delight right me if I'm wrong, but it seems that y'all practise firmly agree with this.
And I will agree with you, meanwhile, that this theory is not a scientific one merely a suggestive one — for the reason that you said, that a scientific theory must fit *all* data points, rather than a all-time fit — and as well for the more literary reason that a novel does not need to conform to geographic reality at all.
Take nosotros reached a satisfying resolution here, then?
What a slap-up exchange–I read
What a great exchange–I read the GG today (astonishing) and went on line to expect specifically for the "valley of the ashes." I'll never find the time to "verify" the location of Wilson'south garage but it is corking to know where it was in full general (Shea Stadium in the hood) and to see some one-time and current photos of the location. Bleak indeed.
I'd approximate that Fitzgerald was pretty happy to merge together features of this landscape to create the lyrical, atmospheric, hellish space he needed to move the novel forward, but your combined work to id the actual spot is wonderful, thank you!!!