A Walk from the Brooklyn Heights Promenade to Brooklyn Bridge Park: The City Past to the City Future

A morning walk along the Brooklyn Heights Promenade most always seems like a good way to start a day in New York, offering sweeping views of the skyline of Lower Manhattan and the Brooklyn Bridge. So romantic! The promenade, high above the East River, would make it on my personal top 10 list for visitors to the city, especially in the context of walking through the handsome neighborhood of Brooklyn Heights. An evening walk here turns the city into a dramatic spectacle of lights.

View from the Brooklyn Heights Promenade
The walk described here begins south at Montague Street and continues north toward the Brooklyn Bridge.

Or, so it would seem, especially for the morning. These days, due to the feverish building of the Brooklyn Bridge Park below, a lofty walk along the venerable promenade feels more at times like a visit to a construction site than a romantic stroll. It's also loud. But if you have a thing for the sights and sounds of tractors moving great mounds of earth, this is a spot for you. Some of these very same tractors are in the process of fashioning manmade hills along the park, ones designed to soften the sounds of the BQE (Brooklyn-Queens Expressway) from both the park and the promenade. Wait a year or two, and things should look prettier.

View of Lower Manhattan from the promenade and a sign noting the Brooklyn Bridge Park below

Brooklyn Bridge Park under construction.

Arriving at Pier 1, one of the park's three completed piers, the largest, and the only one built on landfill, it's time to step into the unfolding future of the re-conceptualized Brooklyn waterfront. The repurposing of great swaths of the riverfront, away from the manufacturing and shipping uses of the past and toward the recreational purposes of our post-industrial economy, constitutes a momentous shift in the city's modern history.

The Summer Rolls in on the First Five Cars: A Warm Evening on the Battery

Though the unofficial start of summer arrives on Memorial Day weekend, now a week away, a hint of the season arrived on Wednesday afternoon this week. At some point, the winds shifted from the north to the south, and when it was time for me to leave work and go home, a wanderlust took over. Upon these southern breezes, I made an impromptu decision to skip my home stop on the downtown 1 train and to stay on till the end of the line.

For many months in the aftermath of the hurricane, the South Ferry station was not an option for riders of the 1 train.
The older South Ferry station has been recommissioned. Riders must sit in the first five cars. 

The end of the line seemed promising, not so much for the destination - the neighborhood of Battery Park and the ferry terminals - but in the actual subway stop itself. The 1 train currently ends at the old South Ferry station, the one that the MTA recently recommissioned in order to serve commuters to Staten Island. The hurricane of last fall had knocked out the newer and bigger one, turning it into "an aquarium," in the words of Governor Cuomo. Now the older station is unearthed, dusted off and operable. But due to its small size, commuters must ride in the first five cars to get off the train. Stepping off the cars into the gently rounded station feels like stepping off an antique carousel.

Decoration in the old South Ferry station, recommissioned in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy

Once above ground, many choices present themselves for an impromptu jaunt around this waterfront neighborhood. A ride on the Staten Island Ferry is certainly one. Another would be a stroll around the water's edge through Battery Park and the Battery Park Esplanade. Another good choice would involve an exploration of the winding streets of the Financial District.

the intersection of Broad and Water Streets, Lower Manhattan

Sometimes, a good bar will do the trick, especially after a long work day. On this particularly dreamy late afternoon, I fell into convivial company upstairs at the Dead Rabbit, a watering hole (or more like a rabbit hole, if you order the right drink) on Water Street. The bar's ambience evokes an Irish pub of a hundred years ago. The experience feels like immersive theater, but in a good way.

Let's Talk About Madison Square Park in the Spring, and Public Art

Let's talk about one New York park that always seems to pop in the spring - Madison Square Park. The colors here are outlandish, and yes, while these photos may take the colors up a notch, they do not exaggerate by much. And let's talk about the challenges of creating public art in such a setting.

Madison Square Park, with the Empire State Building

The lawns in Madison Square Park seem overly green in the spring, and the colors of the flora render equally exaggerated. Not all works of art, courtesy of the Madison Square Park Conservancy's art program, Mad. Sq. Art (official site), can live up to the natural and manmade lushness of this place. Under certain circumstances, public art can wither here. Sometimes, the work seems too small and confined. On the other other hand, occasionally we get something big and daring, such as Antony Gormley's EVENT HORIZON (2010) with its life-size figures creepily perched on nearby rooftops (and in the park, too) or Jaume Plensa's ECHO (2011), a monolithic head. This year we have New York-based artist Orly Genger's  RED, YELLOW AND BLUE (2013), an installation in three acts of highly textured nautical rope in the three primary colors. While Gormley's distant and stoic identical figures played with perceptions of the city itself, here we have a monumental though tactile crochet extravaganza on a scale that matches and yet challenges the park surroundings.

Orly Genger's  RED, YELLOW AND BLUE (2013)

One advantage of setting work in Madison Square Park is that the park doesn't carry a lot of baggage, or at least the baggage was forgotten sometime around 1920. The park is malleable in meaning. This is by contrast with Washington Square Park, still a highly contested battleground for Greenwich Village's bohemian freedom-loving legacy, or Tompkins Square, with its East Village dissent and difference, or Union Square, with its history of labor activity. Madison Square Park was once the epicenter of New York fashion, but it slumbered for a few decades, settling into a state of shabby genteel. In recent times, it was neither here nor there, not uptown or downtown enough to warrant much attention. The park was like an Edith Wharton character that had slipped down the social ladder, the Lily Bart of the New York parks system. (Wharton's birthplace, just a skip down W. 23rd, is now an unremarkable building with a Starbucks at street level.)

Island Adventures: 16 Places to Go in the New York Archipelago

Commuters in New York City need not be reminded that the city, at its geographical essence, is a vast archipelago. Every day over a million people venture forth through the city's network of islands and parts of islands, sailing through the New York Harbor from Staten Island to Manhattan or crossing the East River and Hudson River and the tidal straight of the Harlem River via car, bus, train, or bike to their appointed destinations.

Rockaway Beach

Thousands of people go to work in the New York islands every day just to work on boats. These island-hoppers include members of the commercial shipping trade, the tourist industry, local law enforcement, and the armed services. In addition, thousands of vacationers come and go from the archipelago, boarding ocean liners to explore distant islands with more swimmable waters.

In short, the New York archipelago is a beehive of activity at all times. For proof, take a gander at the Live Ships Map from MarineTraffic.com. The map shows passenger ships, fishings vessels, tugs, and so forth in real time. MarineTraffic has an app, too.

In the midst of this busy city of many ports of call, what are some of the best locales for a quick island holiday? While the following list does not to present itself as a novel idea, the places constitute a partial repertory of itinerant adventures. Not all have sand. With temperatures beginning to climb, our thoughts drift from our work to the fantasies of island leisure. Is that an ocean breeze in the air? Perhaps.

Is there anything better than an early summer evening on Coney Island?
In this picture from July 14, 2012, musician Billy Bragg celebrates the 100th birthday of Woody Guthrie, who spent some of his happiest years living on Coney Island.

People often need a break from the everyday routine to get a new perspective. The list below includes many places with offbeat or unusual views of the city.

"There now is your insular city of the Manhattoes, belted round by wharves as Indian isles by coral reefs - commerce surrounds it with her surf. Right and left, the streets take you waterward. Its extreme down-town is the battery, where that noble mole is washed by waves, and cooled by breezes, which a few hours previous were out of sight of land. Look at the crowds of water-gazers there." - Herman Melville, Moby Dick

Adventurous Perspectives: 16 Places to Go in the New York Archipelago 

Battery Park

Battery Park. For a couple of centuries, before Ellis Island, immigrants arrived in New York at this point at the tip of Lower Manhattan, passing through Castle Garden. Today, visitors congregate near the rails to gaze at the harbor and the Statue of Liberty. more

Brooklyn Bridge Park. The new park, repurposed from working piers, features close-to-water views of Manhattan, offering a surprising new vantage point to those of us more accustomed to strolling the Brooklyn Heights Promenade high above the park. If you're up for it, walk across the Brooklyn Bridge.  more