A History of Brooklyn Bridge Park

by Nancy Webster

  NOT SURPRISINGLY, the early leaders of the movement to create Brooklyn Bridge Park take pride in its ultimate realization, though, given the controversies and compromises that have accompanied the site’s development over the past thirty years, some express disappointment with specific features of the park’s design and the time it has taken to complete.

  “It’s the most marvelous thing that ever happened for Brooklyn Heights,” insists Benjamin Crane, whose passionate speech at a BHA meeting in 1987 in the undercroft of the First Unitarian Church inspired many local residents to rally around the notion of a park on the piers. “I had my brief cameo and then I moved on, but people like Otis Pearsall, John Watts, and Tony Manheim—they were the ones who hung in there and made it happen. It was Tony, I would say, who kept the flag waving until the governor and the mayor finally decided to fund it. And now you have this marvelous park that’s used by everyone.”46

  FIGURE 46

  Playground on Pier 6, 2013.

  COURTESY OF NANCY WEBSTER

  FIGURE 47

  Beach-volleyball court on Pier 6, 2014.

  © ALEXA HOYER

  While still an enthusiastic supporter of the park, Otis Pearsall worries that years may have been wasted because of the “doctrinaire mind-set of the ‘pure park’ advocates” in the early park movement. In their detailed monograph on the early years of the Piers Committee, “The Origins of Brooklyn Bridge Park: 1986–1988,” Pearsall and original committee chair Scott Hand observe the striking similarities in the balance between housing and open space in Scheme D (Intensive Mixed-Use Development), illustrated in Buckhurst Fish Hutton Katz’s report The Future of the Piers in 1987, and the current design of Brooklyn Bridge Park, openly wondering if the park might have been constructed a decade earlier if the Piers Committee and Community Board 2 had not “flatly rejected any notion of compromise” with the Port Authority on the issue of housing.

  A decade and a half after his forced departure from the leadership of the park movement, former Brooklyn Bridge Coalition executive director Anthony Manheim is far more sanguine about the extensive time line for the park’s creation. “I do take comfort,” explains Manheim, “from learning from Morrison Heckscher’s recent book on the history of Central Park that it took more than thirty years, start to finish, to complete. We’re only in thirty years at this point. So we’re still a little ahead of the game.”47

  For Manheim—who served on the Community Advisory Council for the park and who continues to lend his sympathy and advice, though not his direct support, to the anti-housing movement—the park’s realization is a vital example of the impact that ordinary citizens can have on their communities. “What keeps me going,” explains Manheim, “is what has always kept me going—the illusion that an individual or a group of individuals from the community can make a difference. Certainly in retrospect, a lot of what’s good about Brooklyn Bridge Park—and most of it is good—is the result of what the community has done. There are still opportunities for improvement and change in the park, which I would love to see, but there’s still time for that.”48

  “A lot of people thought that this was just a bunch of white guys trying to protect their views [of the Manhattan skyline],” agrees former Coalition co-chair Tom Fox. “In fact, people actually said that. But it wasn’t that at all. These were people who saw a tremendous opportunity to do something special for the entire city and who came up with a vision of how to do it. It took a few years to define that opportunity and to clarify the vision, but it has pretty much stayed together for the past twenty-five years, and I think that’s a testament to the public participation that went into it and all of the tribulations that this thing has been through and with all the good things and the bad things that people have said about it. It’s continued to change and adapt over time in response to the changing economic, social, physical parameters around it. That’s what’s made it work. And I’m proud to have been a part of that.”49

  For Adrian Benepe, who served as New York City Parks Commissioner from 2002 to 2012 and now promotes the public–private partnership model for park development nationwide on behalf of the Trust for Public Land, Brooklyn Bridge Park is one of the crowning achievements of contemporary urban design, not simply for Brooklyn and New York City but also for the entire nation. “I have a personal deep love and affection for this park,” acknowledges Benepe. “It feels like one of my kids, and I’m delighted with how well it’s done. As I travel around the country, people are goo-goo eyed about Brooklyn Bridge Park. You can literally hear an audible gasp when you show them pictures of the site. It’s already inspiring other cities around the country not to try to top it but simply to equal it.”50

  “Brooklyn Bridge Park is a great example of what’s possible when government works with committed members of the community toward a common goal,” explains former mayor Michael Bloomberg, “and Regina Myer and everyone at the Conservancy deserve a lot of credit. The park transformed a neglected piece of our city’s past into a beautiful space for all New Yorkers to share, and brought new life and energy to the waterfront. It gave people a new way to experience our historical harbor and skyline, and reconnected people with our natural heritage. It also brought new investment to the neighborhood, and millions of visitors who support local businesses. Innovative parks make cities stronger, better places to live and work—and that’s why cities around the world are looking to Brooklyn Bridge Park for inspiration.”51

  For Candace Damon, a partner at Hamilton, Rabinovitz & Alschuler (HR&A), the realization of Brooklyn Bridge Park serves an instructive model for community input in urban-development policy. “Brooklyn Bridge Park is looked to across the country as an example of what community-based planning led by civic groups can accomplish,” insists Damon, who played an integral role in both the initial LDC board meetings and the public charrettes for the park. “There may have been more acrimony than one usually experiences in the planning and design of this park, but there has also been far more success. Yeah, we yelled at each other a lot, and most people don’t yell at each other. But most people don’t get their parks built. I truly believe that this is among the most successful and earliest examples of community-based park planning and creation.”52

  “When Olmsted built Central Park and Prospect Park, the city was overwhelming,” explains John Alschuler, chairman of HR&A. “Horses were everywhere. The streets were mud. We desperately needed parks as places of self-conscious pastoral repose where we could get away from the city. But we have a very different city now. It’s much more garden-like. And that allows parks to be much more urban and active. I think what’s really striking about Brooklyn Bridge Park is how instructive it has been in its integration of those two elements: the pastoral and the urban (figure 48). That to me is one of the great contributions of the park to the great wave of park making that we’re experiencing today.”53

  FIGURE 48

  Entrance to Pier 6, 2014.

  © JULIENNE SCHAER

  For Conservancy and LDC board member David Offensend, Brooklyn Bridge Park not only is an important achievement for the residents of Brooklyn but also represents the beginning of a citywide and nationwide movement to reclaim urban waterfronts for the public. “In the long term,” says Offensend, “I really hope that this is a step along the way to recapturing more of New York’s shoreline for parks. We’ve got Hudson River Park. We’ve got Brooklyn Bridge Park. There are other park-type things going up in Greenpoint and other parts of the city. I would love to see the entire shoreline of New York be park.

  “I think the success of this park,” continues Offensend, “will absolutely inspire others to pick up the tools to make other parts of the shoreline of New York into parks. They’ll be encouraged by our success and Hudson River Park’s success. And the third one will be easier. And the fourth one will be easier than that. We’ve engaged a huge number of people who appreciate how beautiful these shoreline parks can be. That’s the future. It’s so many people. It’s not t
his small group. It’s an army now.”54

  “Brooklyn Bridge Park is a true democratic park for all New Yorkers,” echoes former Conservancy executive director Marianna Koval, “in both the process of its creation and the product itself. People responded to our call, ‘If you come, we will build it,’ and came by the tens of thousands throughout the first decade of the twenty-first century. Many, many people invested themselves; gave their money; volunteered their services; talked in their churches, synagogues, and schools; and never stopped talking to elected officials who had to deliver and build the park. This is how you bring change in the city of New York.”55

  WITH THE CITIZENS OF NEW YORK CITY awakening to the recreational benefits of its harbor, the competing interests of open space, development, industry, and shipping continue to vie for space along the shoreline beyond the confines of Brooklyn Bridge Park. Residents of northern Brooklyn are urging the city to fulfill its commitment to build Bush-wick Inlet Park, a promise made during the residential rezoning of Williamsburg in 2005. At Sunset Park in southern Brooklyn, the city is investing more than $100 million in the Brooklyn Army Terminal, and the privately owned Industry City hopes to replicate the success of the Brooklyn Navy Yard as a hub for light manufacturing. Nearby, the city is seeking to revive the adjacent South Brooklyn Marine Terminal for shipping and marine cargo, while just to the south visitors enjoy the sports fields, restored wetlands, and harbor views of Bush Terminal Piers Park. In no-longer-sleepy Red Hook, an Italian development company, Estate Four, has announced plans for a 12-acre, 1.2-million-square-foot mixed-use project on the waterfront called the Red Hook Innovation District, which will include offices, shops, performance spaces, and a promenade.

  In the autumn of 2014, thirty years after the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey announced its development plans for Piers 1–6, the Citizens Budget Commission, a well-regarded nonprofit organization that researches and advocates for sound city and state budget and management practices, released a report on Piers 7–12, immediately south of Brooklyn Bridge Park. The report recommended that the Port Authority, which is losing $30 million a year on the underused marine terminals, close and sell the piers, repurposing them as a combination of open space with residential and commercial development. While the Port Authority has not commented publicly on its plans or the report, the stage is almost certainly set for a reprisal of the public-advocacy movement—with all the negotiations, conflicts, compromises, and, hopefully, promise—that resulted in Brooklyn Bridge Park.

  NOTES

  INTRODUCTION

  1 Anthony Manheim, interview by David Shirley, February 25, 2014.

  2 Ken Fisher, interview by David Shirley and Nancy Webster, August 25, 2014.

  3 Adrian Benepe, interview by David Shirley and Nancy Webster, September 22, 2014.

  4 Herbert C. Kraft, The Lenape or Delaware Indians: The Original People of New Jersey, Southeastern New York State, Eastern Pennsylvania, Northern Delaware and Parts of Western Connecticut (South Orange, N.J.: Seton Hall University Museum, 1996), 22.

  5 Ibid.

  6 Russell Shorto, The Island at the Center of the World: The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony That Shaped America (New York: Vintage, 2004), 10.

  7 William Everdell, Rowboats to Rapid Transit: A History of Brooklyn Heights (New York: Brooklyn Heights Association, 1973), 24.

  8 Walt Whitman, “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry,” in The Complete Poems, ed. Francis Murphy (New York: Penguin, 1986), 190.

  9 Landmark’s Preservation Commission, Dumbo Historic District Designation Report (New York: Landmark’s Preservation Commission, December 18, 2007), 4–19.

  10 Thomas Dongan, The Dongan Charter of the City of New York, April 27, 1686, University of California Digital Library, 3.

  11 “To Extend the Piers: New York Dock Company Begins Work in the East River,” Brooklyn Eagle, June 15, 1902.

  12 “Tracks, Piers, Factories and Warehouses Make the Wheels of Industry Go ’Round,” Brooklyn Eagle, May 30, 1936.

  13 Sherill Tippins, The February House: The Story of W. H. Auden, Carson McCullers, Paul and Jane Bowles, Benjamin Britten and Gypsy Rose Lee, Under One Roof in Wartime America (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2005).

  14 Truman Capote, A House on the Heights (New York: Little Bookroom, 2001), 15.

  15 Hart Crane, The Letters of Hart Crane, 1916–1932, ed. Brom Weber (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1965), 183.

  16 Hart Crane, “Poem to the Bridge,” in The Collected Poems, ed. Waldo Frank (New York: Liveright, 1966), 46.

  17 “Heights Demand Rights: Dr. Hillis Speaks Plainly Before New Association for Transit Benefits,” New York Times, February 6, 1910.

  18 Empire State Development Corporation, “Historical Resources,” in Final Environmental Impact Statement (New York: Empire State Development Corporation, December 9, 2010).

  19 Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, “Port Authority Marks 50th Anniversary of Containerization at Port of New York and New Jersey,” press release, April 25, 2006.

  20 Beatrice Pineda Revilla, “History of the Fulton Ferry Landing,” The Sixth Borough: Redefining Brooklyn’s Waterfront: Brooklyn Heights, http://thesixthborough.weebly.com/history-of-fulton-ferry-landing.html.

  21 New York City, Office of Downtown Brooklyn Development, Fulton Ferry (New York, April 1972), 6–7.

  22 Deborah Hoffman, “The Revitalization of Fulton Ferry: A Prototype of Waterfront Development in New York City” (New York University, Graduate School of Public Administration, July 1979), 21.

  23 Edward C. Burks, “A Touch of Frisco in Brooklyn Is Proposed,” New York Times, December 19, 1971.

  24 Hoffman, “Revitalization of Fulton Ferry,” 39.

  25 Landmarks Preservation Commission, Fulton Ferry Historic District Designation Report (New York: Landmarks Preservation Commission, 1977), 18.

  26 “The River Café Celebrates Its 30th Birthday,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, July 5, 2006.

  27 Allan Kozinn, “Bargemusic: Brooklyn’s Floating Concert Site,” New York Times, August 31, 1990.

  28 Hoffman, “Revitalization of Fulton Ferry,” 41–45.

  ONE. WHAT SHALL WE DO WITH THE PIERS?

  1 Peter Hall, Cities of Tomorrow: An Intellectual History of Urban Planning and Design Since 1880 (New York: Wiley, 2014), 419.

  2 Robert F. Wagner, Jr., “New York City Waterfront: Changing Land Use and Prospects for Urban Development,” in Urban Waterfront Lands, ed. Committee on Urban Waterfront Lands (Washington, D.C.: National Academy of Sciences, 1980), 81.

  3 Edward A. Gargan, “City Will Revamp Ports Department,” New York Times, July 9, 1981.

  4 Quoted in ibid.

  5 Quoted in William G. Blair, “No. 1 No More, New York Port Seeks to Strengthen Its Role,” New York Times, September 24, 1982.

  6 Quoted in ibid.

  7 Martin Gottlieb, “City’s First Major Fish Plant Set for Brooklyn Waterfront,” New York Times, December 10, 1983.

  8 Eric Lipton, “New York Port Hums Again, with Asian Trade,” New York Times, November 22, 2004.

  9 Gottlieb, “City’s First Major Fish Plant.”

  10 Anthony Manheim, interview by David Shirley, February 25, 2014.

  11 Ibid.

  12 Ibid.

  13 William G. Blair, “Brooklyn Heights Plan Is Disputed,” New York Times, July 9, 1984.

  14 Manheim, interview.

  15 Brooklyn Heights Association, board of governors, Annual Meeting minutes, May 10, 1984.

  16 Manheim, interview.

  17 Fred Bland, interview by David Shirley, May 1, 2014.

  18 Manheim, interview.

  19 Bland, interview.

  20 Robert Parsekian, interview by David Shirley and Nancy Webster, September 17, 2014.

  21 New York City Public Development Corporation, New York City’s Waterfront: A Plan for Development: A Report to the Mayor by the New York City Public Development Corporation (New York: Public Development Corporation,
July 1986), 1.

  22 Ibid.

  23 Brooklyn Heights Association, board of governors, Annual Meeting minutes, February 5, 1985.

  24 Manheim, interview.

  25 Brooklyn Heights Association, board of governors, Annual Meeting minutes, Spring 1985.

  26 Richard D. Lyons, “In Brooklyn Heights, a Spotlight on 87 Neglected Acres,” New York Times, October 27, 1985.

  27 In 1981, New York governor Hugh Carey announced plans for the construction of a six-lane, 4.2-mile highway along the Hudson River in Manhattan to replace the crumbling West Side Highway. “Westway,” as the proposed project was called, would run underground through a landfill extension into the Hudson River, with high-rise residential towers and a state park constructed on the land above. The $1.7 billion project encountered opposition from various quarters, however, including New York City mayor Edward Koch, who suggested that the money be used to upgrade the city’s subway system, and U.S. District Judge Thomas P. Griesa, who ruled that the proposed construction would threaten the Hudson River’s native aquatic species. By 1984, the project had been abandoned.

  28 “Mammoth Waterfront Development Might Connect Montague Street with the Piers,” Brooklyn Heights Paper, October 19–25, 1985.

  29 “A Hotel on the Piers? Not a Good Idea; Access to the Piers: The Next Controversy,” Brooklyn Heights Press & Cobble Hill News, October 31, 1985.

  30 George Winslow, “Will Watchtower Development Block Our Promenade View?” Brooklyn Heights Press & Cobble Hill News, October 31, 1985.

  31 Scott M. Hand and Otis Pratt Pearsall, “The Origins of Brooklyn Bridge Park, 1986–1988,” 2014, 14, published on the Brooklyn Historical Society catablog, http://brooklynhistory.org/docs/OriginsBrooklynBridgePark.pdf.

  32 Brooklyn Heights Association, board of governors, Annual Meeting minutes, February 5, 1985.

  33 Halcyon Ltd., Development Concepts for the Brooklyn Piers [Halcyon Report] (Hartford, Conn.: Halcyon, 1985), 3.