Photo Essay: Brooklyn Bridge Park, Under Construction (Open House NY)

We'd been seeing the SKANSA signs on the Brooklyn Bridge waterfront at least since last summer, when we took a number of harbor cruises that launched out of Fulton Ferry Landing. But we weren't really sure what was planned for the construction site on the old piers until we visited today as part of Open House New York

The first sections of Brooklyn Bridge Park are scheduled to open in Winter 2010, but they've already made quite a bit of progress on Pier 1 and have moved onto Pier 2. A lot of the old shipping containers have been removed or renovated to open up the waterfront to visitors in an expanse of rolling hills, benches, and lit pathways below the Brooklyn Heights Promenade and under the south side of the Brooklyn Bridge.









fibers to prevent erosion



granite from Roosevelt Island bridge









Pier 2

Limestone



manhole cover

Somehow, I felt at home there, amidst the simultaneous destruction and construction. It felt so very tangible to me, man's impact on his environment, all footprints and tire tracks and neon construction colors. It was like one big open-air abandoned building.

When it's completed, the park will feature some grassy slopes that seems a little closer to the original topography of New York. But it'll be noisy like the rest of New York: helicopters overhead, boats motoring by, traffic clogging the BQE behind and the bridge to the north. Children will wander off and throw rocks, hoist wooden spears and kick dirt, just as they did during today's tour. And it'll be yet another spot from which to gaze at the Manhattan skyline and the Statue of Liberty, as though that's all New York has to offer.

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