Parks and Recreation

The new Brooklyn Bridge Park opened recently. A mile and half long collection of baby blue, tin warehouses that once stood as relics of a long expired waterfront industry here, have been transformed into park. The old warehouses, strictly off limits to all, stood like giant mute sentries. Their main function for the past half century had been to keep the public from the water's edge. They were in, and on, but not of, the community. The piers that have been completed have been refitted with paths, trees, hills and an icing of almost painfully green, new grass that would make any golf course jealous. The trees, as in any new, man made landscape, feel dwarf-like, frail, and tenuous. The park is impressive looking, roomy and well-designed. It feels as if it hovers on and just above the surface of the East River. Kind of like laying belly down on the bow of a fast moving boat. One of the more exciting things about being in the new park is that I, and the rest of New York, get to experience certain views and expansions of the surrounding area that no one has been able to experience in the the last 60 years!


Victor Prevost, Central Park, 1862