A Look Back to Look Forward

Clues to regenerating communities that have been damaged by unmanaged development are often revealed in the rich patterns of human collaboration that existed in their economic heydays, before the corrosive effects of extractive development were fully felt. Here we explore the history of those collaborative human networks in Tottenville.  Perhaps what we learn can help Tottenville and other communities develop new mutually-supportive learning networks that will be relevant to revitalizing economies in the 21st century. 
 

The Legacy of an "Intricate" Economy

A Short Economic History of Tottenville
We know that in regenerative local economies, residents and enterprises, financial and educational systems, and built and natural environments thrive through continuous, mutually supportive exchanges. Human network scientists call this "intricacy"—when human knowhow, cultural mores, resources and infrastructure create naturally synergetic, self-nourishing systems.

Intricacy characterized Tottenville's economy during most of the roughly 100 years beginning in the mid-19th century when it was first the heart of New York City's oystering industry.  In his book, The Town the Oyster Built, Barnett Shepherd describes Tottenville as a small community at the mouth of New York Harbor, first settled by farmers in the 17th century but later transformed into a bustling mid- to late 19th century village centered on Main Street and energized by oystering, ship-building, and related maritime trades, and tourism.
 
In the late 1800s a second wave of enterprising industrial-era businessmen opened factories in Tottenville, including a metals refinery that became known as “the College by the Creek” because of the many locals who went on to careers in the industry. Tottenville's Atlantic Terra Cotta, a terra cotta manufacturing plant, supplied the entire façade of Manhattan’s Woolworth Building with terra cottta fashioned by highly skilled artisans. Kreischer Brickworks, located in a contiguous village, used local clay to produce their distinctively colored bricks.  The last of these south shore factories closed its doors in the year 2000.

By the late 20th century, however, a combination of sewerage, toxic industrial effluent, and overfishing had all but erased this once-thriving maritime economy.  With the closing of Tottenville's oyster beds in the early 20th century, Barnett writes:

“...an entire economy and culture that had created the town of Tottenville were eliminated." Later, he notes, "in the 1930s the closing of Atlantic Terra Cotta [factory] and Brown’s Shipyard, among other industries, gave impetus to this change. Nassau Smelting was the last [factory] to go, scaling back in the 1970s and finally closing in 2000."

With no local industries to anchor it, by the late 20th century, Tottenville's Main Street – like so many others across the country– fell victim to a car-centric economy of big-box and chain stores. Tottenville's lively retail and service economy, once centered on Main Street, has devolved into a series of strip-malls located on nearby Page Avenue. Gone are the jobs that offered skill building and a living wage to locals and a Main Street where the community could congregate.

Were it not for its natural assets — its gently contoured shorelines, the ideal ecological conditions that allowed oysters to grow in abundance in its waters, the deep offshore channels  that allowed ships to transport goods to and from its dockyards and later its factories—Tottenville's local economy would never have prospered as it did through the mid-20th century. However, as systems scientist Dr. Sally Goerner notes, it was the collaborative human relationships that grew out of its interdependent local industries that created the vibrant, self-sustaining economy that Tottenville enjoyed in its economic heyday. Understanding how those networks formed provides clues to how they might be revived.

“What happened over time,” Sally speculates, “was that relationships developed among people making a living in Tottenville. It was a very practical kind of thing.  For shipbuilding, for example, you needed a whole variety of specialists and artisans. Not only did each specialist business need the other, but also over time they began to know each other.  You knew who did high quality work and who didn't.  Who was a deadbeat and who would honor his or her contract.  These were all essential to the functioning of Tottenville's human economic network.”

Sally maintains that this complex co-evolution of interdependent human relationships took time. One-off or single-focus projects in communities like Tottenville won't nurture meaningful revitalization.  Weekend workshops and events, and  large-scale, exclusively outside-engineered infrastructure projects, purely "green-focused" initiatives, and mega commercial developments requiring large taxpayer subsidies are unlikely to generate the desired community vitality, however well-intentioned. 

It also helps to develop a local “ecology of knowledge,” a system of natural, hands-on learning that grows out of individual participation in those various interconnected businesses. Recreating this today means Tottenville must develop projects and enterprises that appeal to multiple interests and draw in some way on existing local talents or skills. Where those skills don’t exist locally, they must be cultivated through apprenticeship programs, sometimes bringing in outside experts, to ensure that the projects or businesses can continue when the experts fold up their tents and leave the community. In short, Tottenville will need to develop the local “know-how” infrastructure, not just the “physical-material” infrastructure.

We tend today to focus on the environmental damage wrought by our industrial economy, especially in the days before the Environmental Protection Agency ushered in an era of environmental regulatory constraints.  However historian Barnett Shepherd reminds us of the positive roles that local factories once played in communities.

For example, Nassau Smelting, a metals refinery located along Tottenville's Mill Creek did indeed pollute local waters.  But, as Shepherd points out, before it ceased operations in 2000, many young Tottenvillians "found their first jobs at Nassau Smelting before going on to other work." It was, in fact, nicknamed, “The College by the Creek.”  A stop on the Staten Island train was also established to create mass transit for those factory workers.

Next Steps for Regenerating Tottenville
The key to revitalizing a community lies in bringing together people who can identify and harness the resources required to take on new projects, who can make ongoing assessments of their success and course corrections when necessary, and who can plan next step strategies on the path toward regeneration.

We now look forward to identifying in Tottenville what Hanmin Liu of the Wildflowers Institute calls "informal capital and leadership," and to documenting how the community moves forward. We've already begun to imagine some possibilities.