Under the (Art) Bridge: Public Art and "Public" Art

For awhile now, a temporary sidewalk bridge in DUMBO has hosted a public art installation: ChromaTweet, by Aleksandar Maćašev, which renders the artist's daily emotions in single colors over the course of three years and counting (it might go without saying that it is also a daily tweet). I find the digital, time-based form of this project extremely compelling, and some of the offshoots are quite beautiful. The banner in DUMBO, however, feels flat and uninspiring--reading more like an advertisement printed for the latest mixed use development.  What's more interesting to me is the ad hoc gallery ("graffiti" seems like an imprecise term) that has sprung up underneath the bridge. Here's a sampling, from Talib Kweli to Aliens to Happy Faces...

View of Art Bridge looking west down Water Street

Ones and Twos: The State of Joralemon East

Part 2 of 2 on the intermediate streets between Joralemon and State Streets in Brooklyn Heights

In the latter half of the 18th century, the mansion of Philip Livingston (again, a signer of the Declaration of Independence) stood between Joralemon and State Streets, facing Hicks. To the east of the mansion grew Livingston's gardens. During the Revolutionary War, the estate hosted General Washington and his troops, and--as the Garden Place Association so eloquently put it on this enjoyable "Chart to Find Your Way About" in 1933--"Here was held the Council of War at the time of the Battle of Long Island." Following Washington's retreat to Manhattan, the British Navy fashioned a hospital out of Livingston's mansion, continuing to tend his gardens. At the turn of the 19th century, a judge named Teunis Joralemon purchased the estate. In 1842, shortly after his death, the property was subdivided, leading to the creation of Garden Place.

(underlay via Google Maps)

The London Plane trees seen in the photos below were planted by the Garden Place Association in the 30s (they're also enthusiastically sketched on the aforementioned chart).

(L-R): Garden Place looking south, Termination of Garden Place at south end, Garden Place looking north

In the middle of the block we uncover an interesting bit of building archaeology. According to the plaque on the two-story brick building below (upper right), the structure was built in 1846 as a carriage house and stable to serve No. 13 Garden Place (below left). Seventy years later, it was converted to a garage with a dwelling on the second floor. In 1919 (from what I can surmise), a two-story, three-family English Tudor style building bridged the gap between No. 13 and its carriage house. I'd like to imagine there's a secret underground tunnel that still runs between the two.

Clockwise from left: 13 Garden Place, its original carriage house, and the intervening development

Details of Garden Place

Shuffling over down State Street, past Henry, we find ourselves at Sidney Place, the easternmost of the four connector streets between State and Joralemon. In Brooklyn by Name, the namesake of the street is said to be Sir Philip Sidney, a 16th Century English nobleman who--at the age of 32--was slain while fighting the Spanish in the Netherlands (shot to death off of his horse). From the same book, I learned that Sidney Place was initially called Monroe Place, which is now located farther north in Brooklyn Heights.

R-L: Sidney Place looking north, looking south

Two-thirds of the distance between State and Joralemon, Aitken Place--an extension of Livingston renamed for a 19th Century priest--terminates at Sidney Place (see picture on the left below). On the north side of Aitken Place stands the Catholic Church of St. Charles Borromeo, anchoring the north end of the block. Originally built in 1842 as an Episcopal Church, the property was sold to the Catholics in 1849, and the Episcopalians moved into Grace Church shortly thereafter. Unfortunately, the original church was destroyed in a fire, and the current Gothic Revival church was designed in 1868 by the prolific and ballyhooed Irish-American architect Patrick C. Keely. The interior of St. Charles Borromeo boasts the "largest and last extant Odell tracker organ in New York City," in continuous use for the last 132 years. To the uninitiated (including me), "tracker" refers to the type of organ which utilizes a mechanical connection to link the keys and pedals to the pipe valves, as opposed to an electric or electro-pneumatic connection.  One more fun fact: the first priest here, Rev. Charles C. Pise, was also an educator and the founder of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, carrying on the mission of the patron saint.

St. Charles Borromeo

Across Aitken Place to the south is the site of the former parochial school tied to St. Charles Borromeo.  Today, it is being converted into the new home of the Mary McDowell Friends School Upper School, a Quaker School established for students with learning disabilities (below left). Of further note is the recently restored wood frame house at the north end of the block, across Joralemon, which dates from 1833 (below, upper left).

Clockwise from upper left: 1830s wood frame house, carriage house, Mary McDowell Friends School, Sidney Place gardens

Ones and Twos: The State of Joralemon West

Part 1 of 2 on the intermediate streets between Joralemon and State Streets in Brooklyn Heights

Moving south from last week's jaunt, we travel to the area now known as "Willowtown". According to its eponymous association, the neighborhood sits on the former estate of Philip Livingston, a signer of the Declaration of Independence.  Within Willowtown, we encounter a couple of short blocks that fall within our present scope of interest: Columbia Place and Willow Place.  Clay Lancaster and Edmund Gillon describe the creation of Willow Place--which presumably also explains Columbia Place--in their book, Old Brooklyn Heights: New York's First Suburb:

The Hicks brothers originally planned Willow Street to extend only between Middagh and Clark Streets. In 1818 the Brooklyn trustees wished to continue it to State Street, but Hezekiah B. Pierrepont wanted to maintain long blocks running in an east-west direction across his estate, and the scheme still prevails. Willow Street takes up on the south side of the former Pierrepont estate, the stretch from Joralemon to State Street going by the name of Willow Place. (Lancaster and Gillon, 74)

If it weren't for Pierrepont, Willow and Columbia would be just like any other street. Luckily for us, we now have two more quirky little streets to explore. The two maps below help to illustrate the result of Pierrepont's stubbornness. The first depicts Brooklyn Heights in 1855, while the second is contemporary. Notice the modern-day truncation of State Street and Columbia Place.  More on that later...

Illustration of isolation of Columbia Place and Willow Place, ca. 1855 (Map via Rumsey Collection)

Present-day configuration of streets (Google Maps)

Columbia Place from the north (left) and south (right)

One of the foremost philanthropists of 19th Century New York was Alfred Tredway White, who espoused the notion of dignified living for the working classes. In fact, his Tower and Home Buildings, built in Cobble Hill in 1879, reportedly constituted the earliest public housing project in the United States AND proved that worker housing could turn a profit (though he famously limited his profit to 5%). By 1890, White and his architect, William Field, had refined the model in the creation of their largest and most ambitious work, the Riverside Buildings, located at the corner of Joralemon and Columbia Place. In several ways, these projects represented a radical shift in tenement housing. Perhaps the biggest innovation was the provision of ample light and air for all tenants. This was accomplished by reserving approximately half of the buildable lot for gardens and open space, and by limiting the depth of the building to allow daylight and views on both sides of the apartments. The courtyard at Riverside also acted as a community gathering place, featuring a park, a bathhouse and a music pavilion. Originally comprising 9 buildings aggregated in a U-shape around the central courtyard, the complex today is a shadow of its former self. Thanks to Robert Moses, in the middle part of the 20th Century, the construction of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway cleaved through the site, eliminating the four western buildings and a large portion of the courtyard (and cutting off State Street from the water). In the aerial photo below, you can see the remaining complex hugging the expressway.

Bird's eye view of Riverside Buildings from West (courtesy of Bing Maps)

Regardless, what remains is a testament to the remarkable vision of White, embodied by the care given to the details. The cast iron railings--prominent in the photos below--do not signify private balconies, as one might expect. Instead, they mark shared outdoor entry porches to eliminate the need for corridors (the tower portion contains an open-air stairwell). Admittedly, this probably isn't as nice in colder months, but other than that, it's a nice touch. 

Detail views of Riverside Buildings

Across the street to the west, four colorful clapboard houses stand anachronistically amidst the spring chickens adorned in austere brick. In the 1840s, the wood frame homes were erected as part of a string of nine such homes known as "Cottage Row" (Lancaster and Gillon, 74). Accustomed as Brooklyners are to the near-omnipresent stoop, it's rare that one comes across actual front porches in this neck of the woods. By the end of the block, the buildings fall away, and we are treated to a community garden, flanked by a narrow dog run and finally (just out of view) a playground, which provides a buffer to Atlantic Avenue.  Thanks to the climbing vegetation behind the garden, it's almost possible to forget that a loud and obnoxious expressway looms just beyond.

Right: Single-family "Cottage Row" townhomes.  Left: Community garden in foreground, dog run beyond

If you thought Columbia Place was motley, wait till you turn the corner.  The southern end of Willow Place is odd, but also a little awesome. In the left photo below, you'll notice a line of Greek Revival homes on the right, unified by a two-story white portico, recently restored. A remnant of something similar appears to have survived across the street, meeting a much different fate. It has been embraced by its modern, deceptively fun-loving family, who doesn't care if it doesn't brush its teeth or if it gets its nose pierced.

Willow Place from the south (left) and north (right)

While I wonder about bugs, I love the vines sprouting from the columns. It gives the old rebel an organic, New Orleansy feel--and a little extra character to the block buildings that love it. Looking at the row of homes from the street, it almost seems like the newer buildings have been built in an E-shape around the two older houses.  That would be ridiculous, of course.

In the middle of the block stands a small Gothic Revival chapel, also bearing the imprint of Alfred White (it is now known as the Alfred T. White Community Center). Originally built by the Unitarian Church, of which White was a prominent and involved member, the chapel has witnessed a startling variety of activity throughout its history. Since 1962, the Heights Players have called it home. The acting troupe's website offers this succinct account of the building's evolution:

The building at 26 Willow Place has had an interesting history. After Mr. White died and the Center was no longer supported, the City of New York took it over as a social center; what was at one point a gym, is now our theater. During World War II, mainly prostitutes used the building. It was then sold to a foundry, which cast the bronze eagle that hangs over the door of the American Embassy in London.

In 1957 a group of Willowtown parents started a cooperative nursery school. Having outgrown the small room they were using, a search for a new space was begun; finally, the chapel and its attached building were found. In the fall of 1962, a group of citizens purchased the chapel and mission house and established the A.T. White Community Center. The three occupants of the building, the Brooklyn Community Nursery School, The Heights Players, Inc. and the Roosa School of Music, were all designated as permanent users.

As the chapel sets back to form an entry court, we are afforded a good look at the adjacent construction, including the structural tie-back for the floor inside (the little plus shape on the brick wall at right).  Evidently seismic separation between buildings was not an issue in White's day.  God bless the building code.

A.T. White Community Center, home of the Heights Players

Ones and Twos, Mews and Throughs: Back in the Good Graces

When Maura and I lived near Red Hook, we dubbed one of our favorite dog-walking routes "The Cheever Weaver," after one of four, long single-block streets that ran between Degraw and Kane Streets in Cobble Hill. Not only did it allow us to put some serious mileage on the pedometer while staying close to home (invaluable), it also served as a gateway into the bizarre and pleasant world of short Brooklyn streets. Some are mews, some might be converted alleys, and some are simply mid-block connector streets, presumably created to give more street frontage to more houses on otherwise massive plots of land. Either way, they're mostly quiet and often leafy, and they're all distinct, with their own idiosyncrasies. These are their stories.

Brooklyn Heights has at least ten such streets. Let's take a walk, starting with the Graces: Grace Court (running west from Hicks Street and ending just above the BQE) and Grace Court Alley (from Hicks east to just shy of Henry Street).  

As the "Alley" might imply, Grace Court is the greener, statelier, more prominent elder sibling of the two. In the first half of the 19th Century, west of Hicks--between Remsen and Joralemon--stood the Trotter Estate to the south (which I believe was home to Jonathan Trotter, the 2nd Mayor of Brooklyn), and the estate of Charles Hoyt, a real estate speculator, to the north. The Trotter estate was later purchased by John H. Prentice, a fur trader and developer of the system of warehouses along the waterfront, who later became involved in the development of Prospect Park. His partner in the fur trade, William S. Packer, bought the adjacent Hoyt estate.  Packer met his wife, Harriet Putnam, when she was working as a governess in Prentice's home. After retiring, he founded the Brooklyn Female Academy, which burned to the ground shortly after his death.  Harriet picked up the pieces, rebuilding the academy as the Packer Institute. Anyway, Packer and Prentice eventually decided to subdivide the two estates, in turn creating Grace Court. An 1894 article from the New York Times, describing the contemporary character of Grace Court, as well as some of its history, explains:


As the land grew valuable and was sold into house lots, after Grace Court was cut through by Mr. Prentice and Mr. Packer, each purchaser bought a lot of double length, with the agreement that the end on the court should never be built upon. Every one at the upper end did this, but one man midway in the block would not agree. He wanted the double lot, but he must have it in width so that a house might be built for his daughter beside his own. This spoiled the arrangement, and two or three houses were put up on that side of Grace Court.


Thus, the north side of Grace Court remains somewhat less structurally populated than the south, though more street-frontage has grown up closer to the river, with the largest buildings (with the best skyline and river views) standing at the west end of the block.  On the other end, Grace Episcopal Church marks the east entrance to the Court (to the left in the first picture below).  The Gothic revival church was designed by the architect Richard Upjohn and opened in 1848 to accommodate the growth of the Episcopalians in Brooklyn.  Down the street, 31 Grace Court served as the one-time home of Arthur Miller, during the period in which he wrote Death of a Salesman.  In 1951, Miller sold the house to W.E.B. DuBois, who lived there until his passing in 1963.  The building has since been carved up into a multi-family dwelling. 

View west down Grace Court, from Hicks Street

Clockwise from left: Brownstone single-family home, a backyard garden fronting Grace Court, Grace Church.

View of the water from the west end of Grace Court

Though not quite as leafy as its western counterpart, Grace Court Alley has been bequeathed smaller doses of green by its residents.  The backs and sides of a few larger apartment buildings face the alley, but it is lined mostly with carriage houses, which were once tethered to the mansions facing Remsen and Joralemon Streets.  For them, the alley is the street.  It's a much quieter and more intimate experience than that of Grace Court, which--probably due to the larger scale of the buildings, the water view and the church--has grown up to become a proper street.  The Alley, in contrast, only hosts the traffic of cars belonging to its houses, and the foot traffic doesn't seem to be much more frequent.  Early in the morning, when the bustle has begun in the rest of Brooklyn, Grace Court Alley can play the ghost town.

View east down Grace Court Alley from Hicks Street.  The 60 Remsen apartment building is to the left.

Designed in the early 1990s by architect Joseph Stella to follow the Landmarks Preservation Commission's recommendation to fit with the character of the nineteenth-century mews, the home at the end of the block stands on the site of a former stable.  On Stella's website, you can see how the alley previously terminated in the side-rump shot of a stable-cum-garage.  The new structure circumvented zoning regulations, which would have limited the building to projecting about half as far into the alley as it does.  Instead, the right (south) side of the ground floor is treated as a breezeway, or entry court, the second floor above is an open air porch, and the third floor is an attic, which can't be held against it, zoning-wise.  If you haven't noticed, zoning regulations and the Landmarks commission carry a lot of weight in this town, and architects, engineers and building owners are constantly fighting to stay one step ahead.

Scenes from the east end of Grace Court Alley.

My Favorite Place in New York: The Granite Prospect at Brooklyn Bridge Park

Granite Prospect at night

Over at my other diversion, Tuna Day, we've kept up a conceit known as "Open Request Sunday," which is pretty much just as it sounds.  Loyal followers take turns sending in song requests (or more often, getting strong-armed into submitting songs), which are posted on the blog every Sunday.  It has turned into a great way to incorporate a little more diversity into the rotation, as the requests often represent music I would never even consider posting to the blog (Norwegian electronica?!). 

Why shouldn't we do something similar at Boxed Out?  So here it is... "My Favorite Place in New York."  No rules, except that the place must be located somewhere in the Five Boroughs, of course.  Today, I'll kick things off.  Then, one of you can take the stand, patiently explaining that Brooklyn is "vastly overrated (you hipster/yuppie/bohemian scum!)" and that--if you really think about it--the Society of Illustrators is way better/cooler/quirkier than any stupid waterfront park.  Pretty soon, all 8 million people here will have weighed in with their own personal takes!  Okay, okay.  First things first...

There's no experience in New York quite like that of standing at the top of the Granite Prospect.  It's part Spanish Steps, part Brooklyn Promenade, with the exhilaration of the top of Rockefeller Center.  While it has been lovingly dubbed "The Stairway to Nowhere," it acts more as an amphitheater, a playground and a picnic spot.  Last weekend, it even hosted the performance of an opera.  When approached from the east, it forms a stunning, expansive vista, revealed after a brief and slightly inclined procession through an intimate path enveloped by dense foliage.  The stairs sweep down, and somewhere the ground stops and the water begins.  Built from granite salvaged from the Roosevelt Island Bridge reconstruction project, the materiality of the stairs feels rough and rich, massive but broken-in and familiar as an old baseball mitt.  Designed by Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, the extensive Brooklyn Bridge Park has emphatically reconnected Brooklyners to 1.3 miles of previously unused waterfront land.  This grand staircase, as it opens up to the river and the skyline, and Governors Island and the Statue of Liberty beyond, reinforces the recent notion of the water as the "Sixth Borough" that ties the city together.  For me, the Granite Prospect is a paragon of so much of what is great about New York: the invigorating movement of its people, the sanctuary of its abundant parks, the majesty of its skyline, and the waterways that birthed it and serve as its common thread.

Bird's eye view of Brooklyn Bridge Park Pier 1 from the West (background image via Bing Maps)

Granite Prospect at Dusk

A picnic at dusk on the granite steps

Morning view of Lower Manhattan

So all of you current and former New Yorkers--or even out-of-towners!--consider this a call for requests.  If you have an idea, just send me photos, links, description, and whatever else you would like to explain your choice.  Hopefully we can turn this into a regular feature... and maybe someday a visitor's guide :)

How to get to the Granite Prospect:

Take the A or C train to High Street (the first station in Brooklyn), then walk northwest (towards the Brooklyn Bridge) along Cadman Plaza West/Old Fulton Street.  When you get to Fulton Landing, the entrance to the park at Pier 1 is on the left.  Head to the water and take a left.  The staircase will be at the south end of the pier.

The 2, 3 and F trains also stop nearby. 

In Praise of Light and Shadow: The Bloch Building at the Nelson-Atkins

Such is our way of thinking—we find beauty not in the thing itself but in the patterns of shadows, the light and the darkness, that one thing against another creates.

- Junihiro Tanazaki, In Praise of Shadows

5 years after it opened, I finally made it to the Bloch Building at the Nelson-Atkins Museum with my dad (while back in Kansas City for the All Star Game).  The last time I was there, it was still under construction, and Maura, Wade and I were shooed off of the roofscape by an irritated security guard.  This time, I was able to appreciate the Steven Holl-designed tour-de-force in totality.  With the possible exception of the beautiful siting and procession through the landscape and around the buildings, the outstanding attribute of the Bloch is its treatment of light.  Since the 5 buildings of the Bloch are referred to as "lenses" (by Holl) or as "lanterns" (by everybody else), this makes sense.  The sculpting of daylight is most obvious within the museum, where the ceiling and walls have been carved and curved away from the clerestories.  But it's also being done on the exterior surfaces, such as in the pronounced board formwork of the site cast concrete retaining walls leading down to Rockhill Road along the east edge of the site, the shadows of which accentuate the lines of the landscape.

View of Bloch Building along Rockhill Road

And in the slight kinking of the channel glass facade, which creates a subtle contrast between surfaces of the lanterns, and between the lanterns and the hues of the sky.

The Bloch Building in relation to the original museum, as seen from the South

The embankments of the landscape rise to envelope the museum below, so the lenses are not actually separate buildings, but portions of the building rising above the landscaped roof to create clerestories and atria bathed in soft, natural light.

View of the Bloch Building from the North.  The original museum is to the right and behind the camera, and the sculpture garden is down the hill to the right.

An aerial view helps to clarify what's going on:

Aerial view from West (courtesy of Google Maps)

A clean system of channel glass and stainless steel fittings and trim enhances the perception of the buildings as massive geometric objects emerging from the ground.

One of the lanterns embedded into the landscaped roof, along with coping and base details

Visitors enter at the North end, which is largely above ground.  The atrium is washed in a soft, bright daylight filtering through an innovative wall system developed with Heintges (curtain wall consultants).  Bendheim Glass fabricated a custom 16" wide double-skin channel glass module infilled with Okapane, a translucent light-diffusing insulating material composed of acrylic tubes.  The rhythm of the three-story glass wall is traversed by a cascading staircase leading from the upper lobby to administrative spaces above (I believe).  

Main Atrium of the Bloch Building

Against the brightness of the atrium, the adjoining galleries and the entrance to the original building stand in stark contrast.  The sequence modulates from light to dark and shades between, leading to stunning moments such as below, where the ceiling peels away to capture the sunlight once more.   

Clerestories formed by "cutting away" the landscape from the building

At certain points, the translucent veil is lifted--at the entrance, at the connection to the sculpture garden.  Instead of creating an atmospheric glow or a subdued dimness, the design selectively frames a focal point without.

Connection from Bloch Building to sculpture garden.  Sculptures by Isamu Noguchi can be seen in the foreground.

Even the parking garage, that most utilitarian of structures, cannot escape the penetrating gaze of the Sun.  The undulating concrete roof is punctuated by circular skylights carved into the base of the reflecting pool above, giving the sunbeams a playful air as the water dances across the lens.

Parking garage, beneath the reflecting pool

One of my favorite pieces in the museum's collection also happened to involve a dramatic manipulation of light and shadow: a three-dimensional mural by the Argentine-born French artist Luis Tomasello.  Tomasello is known for creating the Atmosphère chromoplastique, in which white geometric objects with (oftentimes) colored backsides are arranged on a white surface, so that the resulting shadows take on the hue of the color.  It's quite beautiful, and and a striking subversion of traditional notions of color and shadow.

Luis Tomasello, "Chromoplastic Mural"

For further exploration into Tomasello's work, process, philosophy and influences, check out this interview with the artist, helpfully posted by the Nelson Atkins.  It's in French, but fear not... there are subtitles.


If you ever find yourself in Kansas City--or Wichita or Omaha or St. Louis, even--I cannot recommend highly enough a trip to the Nelson-Atkins, whether you're an art enthusiast, an archi-tourist, or both.  And if you finish and feel a little too high fallutin', shift gears and treat yourself to some Gates barbecue.

UPDATE: Marc Fink from Bendheim Wall Systems (which supplied the custom Lamberts channel glass) has helpfully written to fill in the blanks regarding the rest of the design/construction team for glass at the Bloch:

Managing Architect: BNIM
General Contractor: JE Dunn
Glaziers: Carter Glass
Structural Engineer: Kelley Gipple

Half the Kingdom

In preparation for a massive move to Upstate New York, the Jehovah's Witnesses--longtime residents of DUMBO and Brooklyn Heights--have recently begun to sell off their Brooklyn properties.  The area will be losing a great group of neighbors, but will undoubtedly welcome the surge of new tax revenue.  While in DUMBO the Watchtower properties largely consist of restored warehouses, the Brooklyn Heights holdings are more varied.  The organization inhabits several historic buildings--a carriage house or two, various apartment buildings and the Bossert Hotel, but also possesses a rare (for Brooklyn Heights) bevy of modernist structures.

From what I can tell, the building at 107 Columbia Heights is a dormitory, built in 1959 (according to the inscription at the entrance).  It's not the prettiest building in the world, but it's growing on me.  The two-story base is a methodical and no-nonsense wall of steel, glass and stone, wrapping the corner and leading to a lush entry court along Columbia Heights Street.  Above the brick tower is restrained yet playful, with its slightly whimsical staggered pattern of windows.  The roof appears to boast a common terrace, if the tree peeking out is any indication.

107 Columbia Heights from Orange Street and Columbia Heights

More from Brooklyn Bridge Park

A few more photos documenting the existing state and construction at the waterfront park, the largest park to be created in New York since Central Park opened in 1873:

View from Promenade to Piers 4 through 6.  6 is largely complete.  Governors Island is in the distance.

CP-POW: Hudson River Sloop Clearwater

On a pre-sundown stroll in Red Hook last night, Maura and I came across a gathering of people waiting to board the Clearwater sloop, built over 40 years ago by Pete Seeger and friends to raise awareness for the remediation and preservation of the then-heavily-contaminated Hudson River.  Since then, the Clearwater has become a symbol of and resource for research and education, tirelessly sailing up and down the river, and stopping for a festival every now and then.  Late to the party as usual, we missed out on a great chance to take a ride to the west side to watch the fireworks from the river.  Maybe next year!

The Hudson River Sloop Clearwater

 

Free Outdoor Movies Return to Brooklyn Bridge Park

The summer movie lineup begins tonight at Pier 1, as E.T. is shown on the south lawn at Brooklyn Bridge Park's Pier 1.  A DJ will kick off the evening at 6:00, and the movie will start at sunset.  Hope to see you there!

Brooklyn Bridge Park Brings the Noise

Much to report from our Naval-gazing stomping grounds last weekend.  Vegetation sprouting!  Photoville ending!  Pavement blistering!  A pool... idling?  No!

Brooklyn Bridge Park was in full effect, even if its effect is not yet full.  As you may know, only two piers are complete (of 6 in the works).  Pier 1--directly south of Fulton Landing--is home to one of my favorite spaces in the city (more in the future), as well as a rotating calendar of events, including live music, kite flying and outdoor movies (beginning tomorrow).  At the south end of the park, Pier 6--with playgrounds, sand volleyball and rooftop hot dogs--marks the western end of Atlantic Avenue.  In between is mostly construction, though a couple of nice surprises popped up recently.  Maura and I finally checked out Photoville with a friend, never mind that it was one of the hottest days of the summer.  The shipping containers formed a village of exhibitions featuring everything from portraits of unassuming Mainers with compelling stories to a container-scale camera obscura.  Those fatigued by the sweat lodge of the camera obscura exhibit, which projected an upside-down image of the skyline onto a screen in a pitch-black room, could find solace beneath the tents in the food court.  The central court featured a number of visiting food trucks, which featured empanadas, kimchi tacos and Cool Haus ice cream sandwiches (guess which one was started by frustrated architects).

Just north of Photoville, we stopped to check on the "temporary" pool, which has yet to open.  The pool features more shipping containers, some of which serve as bath houses.  It seemed to spring up in a matter of days, and I noticed today that the area to the north has been filled with sand (more volleyball?), and there looks to be a playground or water park coming next.  Supposedly the pool will stand for 5 years until the spot gets a permanent tenant.

Stay tuned for more from our closest and dearest, sparkliest, parkliest park.

New temporary pool in Brooklyn Bridge Park