A new waterfront grows in Brooklyn

April 2, 2010

New York Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff wrote in today’s paper that the effects of the enormous new Brooklyn Bridge Park will be “immeasurable.”

He says that landscape architect Michael Van Valkenburgh is nothing less than a contemporary Frederick Law Olmsted, creating “one of the most positive statements about our culture we’ve seen in years.”

The review marvels at the way the 65-acre park is designed to blend in with the natural and industrial infrastructure surrounding it. The only down side, the critic contends, is that two planned apartment and hotel buildings will detract from “the public’s sense of ownership” over the new park.

Ouroussoff concludes with this: “The construction of Brooklyn Bridge Park will be an enormous achievement. And assuming that the other harbor parks go forward, the project as a whole will radically alter the character of the city, not only by making it greener but also by reorienting it toward the life of the harbor. It is as optimistic an undertaking as any the city has undertaken since Robert Moses’s monumental postwar highway projects – and better for our lungs.”

See a slideshow here.

– Posted by Thomas J. Walsh