Dumbo Streetscapes Archives - Page 3 of 14

Browse by Topic

11/16/12 1:00pm

Some Dumbo Historic District Street Signs Arrive

The Landmarks Preservation Commission granted landmark status to the Dumbo Historic District on December 18, 2007. Almost five years after the Dumbo Historic District designation, the terra-cotta colored Historic District street signs have arrived for some streets within the district. (We wondered last year about them.) The New York City Department of Transportation in August 2012 has introduced the new mixed case street signs (in a typeface called Clearview, for the typography enthusiasts), and the new Dumbo signs reflect that.

According to the Historic Districts Council, the brown signs, designed by Massimo Vignelli “are the first indication to visitors and New Yorkers alike that they are in a designated New York City historic district and serve an important public awareness role for preservation.”

“The initial signs for the then-80-plus historic district were funded by an anonymous donor with the intention that the City would provide appropriate signage as new districts were designated. This was agreed-upon but failed to be kept in practice, and unfortunately now, communities are responsible for providing funds for their own street signs, often through discretionary city council or private funding.”

According to last year’s NY Times story about these signs, the LPC “routinely tells community groups that make the request that they must raise most of the money for the signs themselves. The foundation grants each historic district $400 for the signs, which cost $55 each to manufacture, according to the commission.”

Why does this matter? The area’s industrial buildings are already recognized by inclusion on the State and National Registers of Historic Places since September of 2000. For some, it could make an economic impact of their real estate value (perceived or actual), while others say it attracts tourists. Some residents see the designation (and its new signs), as an indication that Dumbo has fully gentrified, and thus not the raw and “untouched” neighborhood it once was. Or that the new signs just tell people that they’re, well, in Dumbo, a Historic District.

Dumbo Streetscapes

09/17/12 3:11pm

Dumbo Then and Now: Manhattan Bridge From Washington Street (1974)

by dumbonyc

4 Comments

[+] click for larger

We’ve done two similar versions (here and here) of this shot before, but a reader sent us his version of the view down Washington Street in Dumbo from 1974 vs today. The 1974 photo of course had no luxury loft buildings and was desolate (according to our artist friends who were here at the time). The streets were not maintained much, until the restoration of the Belgian blocks in June 2011.

Thank you Emery Wells for the photo submission.

{Dumbo Then and Now, series, DumboNYC}

Dumbo Art

08/30/12 12:00pm

Dumbo Arts Festival 2012 (Sept 28-30)

by dumbonyc

10 Comments

(Photo courtesy of dumboartsfestival.com)

The 16th Annual Dumbo Arts Festival will take place from September 28 – 30, 2012. Like the previous Dumbo Arts Fests, the event takes place in the entire neighborhood of Dumbo Brooklyn for three days, transforming its streets, parks, bridges, buildings, loading docks, galleries, and studios into canvasses, stages, exhibition spaces. There will be unexpected installations and interactive social experiments. The lineup for this year’s festival, which will showcase more than 500 artists, 100 studios, and 50 galleries and stages, will be announced in the coming weeks.

The festival organizers are expecting 225,000 visitors over the three days.

From the DAF12 press center:

First time this year, the festival will partner with the Children’s Museum of the Arts to expand its family programming, offering kids of all ages a variety of art projects, free-form activities, media workshops, and exhibits themed around the DUMBO Waterfront, including a carousel-making workshop inspired by the beloved local landmark Jane’s Carousel.
Returning for a second year as the Festival’s presenting sponsor, AT&T will once again sponsor a Signature Art Work, which will be announced in the coming weeks. Last year’s piece by artists Luke Skelton and Luke DuBois enabled anyone to text “love” messages, which were then projected across the historic Empire Stores building.

One of our favorite installations last year was Immersive Surfaces, which projected a video onto the Manhattan Bridge and in the Archway:

Festival hours are:

6 p.m. to 9 p.m. Friday, Sept. 28
12 p.m. to 8 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 29
12 p.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 30.

All outdoor projections are open from 6 p.m. to midnight all three nights. For more information on the Dumbo Arts Festival, go to their website at dumboartsfestival.com.

Anchorage Place

07/13/12 1:00pm

Dumbo's Plazas and Streets: Public Design Workshop (July 17)

by dumbonyc

12 Comments

(Could this be the new Pearl Street Triangle?)

As we noted in November 2011, the Dumbo Improvement District secured $20 million for a second phase of street reconstruction. The funds will also be used to permanently build out the Pearl Street Triangle to create a plaza space between the Pearl Street Triangle and the adjacent Archway under the Manhattan Bridge.

The NYCDOT and NYCDDC are hosting a public workshop to gather community input on the permanent design of the plaza spaces on Tuesday, July 17, 2012 starting at 6pm at 111 Front Street, Room 216. This will be the community’s chance to let the designers know what you’d like to see in the space.

The Dumbo BID held an ideas competition for the triangle in 2010, which spurred some interesting (and some far fetched) ideas. While we may not see any of these ideas become reality, next week’s forum will allow the community to provide input to the city on a design that’s best suited for the space.

The above rendering was the winning proposal concept submitted by Brendan Coburn, AIA of Coburn Architecture (based at 45 Main Street) and his project designers, Yuliya Ilizarov and Abdou Ndoye titled “The Tracks: Ride the Rails!” for the Pearl Street Triangle “Ideas Competition” in 2010)

What design (or design elements) do you think should be in the space?

Dumbo in Media

02/03/12 2:00pm

Brooklyn's Rise in Creative Class

by dumbonyc

4 Comments

Writer Kay S. Hymowitz’s article titled How Brooklyn Got Its Groove Back on City Journal is a fascinating read into what changes took place in the past few decades that brought Brooklyn to the forefront of the creative-class in NYC. Ms. Hymowitz asks, “How did the Brooklyn of the Lehanes and crack houses turn into what it is today—home to celebrities like Maggie Gyllenhaal and Adrian Grenier, to Michelin-starred chefs, and to more writers per square foot than any place outside Yaddo? How did the borough become a destination for tour buses showing off some of the most desirable real estate in the city, even the country?”

She answers them by showing how Brooklyn neighborhoods, including Dumbo, grew from being an industrial area into a creative-class gentrified neighborhood and “one of the wealthiest and fastest-growing neighborhoods in Brooklyn”.

In 1981, though, developer David Walentas took a look at the brick warehouses and factories (most dating from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries) and, taking a cue from his recent development successes in another former industrial area, Soho, bought 11 of them—almost an entire neighborhood. Or what he hoped might someday become a neighborhood: like Red Hook, Dumbo was still zoned solely for manufacturing, despite manufacturers’ indifference to the area. Walentas had to wait 17 years for the city to pronounce Dumbo “mixed-use” and for the area to come alive.

Walentas’s prescience—and patience—put him in an unusual position. Like many successful developers, he was able to make a lot of money: space in the buildings he bought for $6 per square foot now sometimes sells for $1,000 per square foot. But unlike other developers, Walentas owned so much of a neighborhood that he could play God. Also, since he was making so much money from the properties overall, he could give rent breaks to commercial tenants that he viewed as desirable—for instance, upscale retailers like West Elm, the modern-furniture outlet, and Jacques Torres, a high-end chocolatier—while refusing chains like Duane Reade, which, he felt, set the wrong, down-market tone.

Read the article for more about Dumbo’s digital-media marketing and startup firms, Williamsburg’s gentrification, and Park Slope’s literary center.

Dumbo Improvement

11/07/11 12:46pm

$20 Million for Phase II of Dumbo Streets Announced

by dumbonyc

26 Comments

The Dumbo Business Improvement District announced last week a $20 million commitment of funds for Dumbo streets by the city for a second phase of reconstruction of DUMBO’s historic Belgian block streets and the centuries-old pipes below them. According to the BID, “The funds will also be used to permanently build out the Pearl Street Triangle to create a world-class plaza space between the Pearl Street Triangle and the adjacent Archway under the Manhattan Bridge. The first phase of work, covering Water and Washington Streets, will be completed this month.”

We have seen some great programming at the Pearl Street Triangle, and it’s good to finally see funding for a more permanent plaza area. The BID held an ideas competition for the triangle last year, which spurred some interesting (and some far fetched) ideas. The BID told DumboNYC that while we may not see any of these ideas become reality, they will continue to solicit ideas from the community to work with the city on a design that’s best suited for the space.

As for the Belgian block restoration, almost everyone we’ve talked to likes the street fixes. However, in a Brooklyn Paper article on Friday titled DUMBO — historyland or Disneyland?, Doreen Gallo of the DUMBO Neighborhood Alliance says that the reconstruction is “historically inaccurate” and too expensive. So we asked her about it. What do most people not know about the restoration? She feels that most people are unaware of what is being sacrificed and what the difference is between restoring the Belgian block in an historic, authentic way and the recent execution on Washington and Water Streets:

“The original Belgian block was replaced with old looking uniform stone and a granite middle car wide bike path and this patterning of crosswalk destroys the original uniformity of the Belgian block with the iconic view of the Manhattan Bridge. It is not a mall, not a renovation but should be a restoration.”

Ms. Gallo reminds us that every street in Dumbo has Belgian blocks.

“[Historically] there was no asphalt. DOT never followed their own HIQA rules and never enforced subcontractors to put the Belgian block back in kind. Gradually, DOT completely paved over Front St, Jay St, Adams St. On Wednesday, at 12:30 pm, Time Warner was cutting through Pearl St parallel with the triangle. When I arrived they’d cut through 20 feet. By 1pm was told that we had a stop work order. Councilmember Levin called the Brooklyn Borough Commissioner and HIQA DOT inspectors showed up assuring that they were there to make sure it was put back exactly how it was under the asphalt. But how can that be if they were cutting through the block? By 2:30 pm 125 feet were cut through. John Weiss, helpful with the permit said that he did not realize that the Belgian block was under 2″ of asphalt. Yesterday Time Warner continued down Pearl toward Plymouth.”

Photos from Friday of the work referenced by Ms. Gallo below:

Clearly there are some differences by preservation groups and the city on how the “restoration” of the Belgian block streets need to be done. There’s no question that Dumbo’s streets need fixing up and more are pleased with it, but according to the DNA, landmark issues must be considered.

More specifics on what the funding will go towards is on the Dumbo BID website.

« Previous Page Next Page »

Sign up for the DUMBO NYC Newsletter.

Browse by Topic