Investigating The Brooklyn Bridge (Part 1 of 2)
Van Alen Institute launched an open competition to reimagine Brooklyn Bridge. This article gathers initial thoughts and traces our potential ideas that spark our imagination and creativity to rethink one of NYC’s most important landmarks.
Reflection on the bridge as part of the historical legacy of the city implies thinking of the public perception, stories, and experiences that people from New York and abroad have accumulated over time. The study enables the conjuring of curiosity and encourages a re-invitation to the users’ memory. Transforming the bridge may imply reorganization, infrastructural change or innovation, and empowers designers, architects, artists or ethnographers to enhance the public experience; inviting them to experience this known-by-heart place and create a medium for the re-imagining of a historical piece of infrastructure.
History
Completed in 1883, John Augustus Roebling’s Brooklyn Bridge was the first steel-wire suspension bridge in the world. Thirteen years of construction and a lot of work culminated on May 24, 1883, when the Bridge opened to the public. On the first day after opening, some 1,800 vehicles and 150,000 people crossed the bridge. Almost coinciding in date and meters, the bridge is 1825 meters long, the largest at its time. Such achievement is said to have caused “caisson disease” for many of the workers who built it and even caused the death of its architect from tetanus. It was his son, Washington, and wife, who managed the construction until its completion.
Its granite towers and steel cables have suspended millions of travelers over time. The transit for which it was designed has changed quite a bit. In recent years, the development of the anchoring areas of the bridge has caused even more foot traffic. The development of DUMBO at the end of the 20th century has led to it being modeled as one of the most successful waterfront developments in the world due to its rich industrial history and value to the artistic community. Across the river in Manhattan, the repurposing of the waterfront such as Pier 17, has caused the areas adjacent to access of the bridge to be activated. The transformation of landscapes in relation to the construction of bridges is an intricate correlation of development; it triggers an immense amount of opportunity and potential to enhance urban activation and development. Since the construction of the first bridges, we can see examples all across the world that shorten the distance between so many resources and allow a more fluid and communicated territory, be it as a form of control or openness. To name a few, from Ponte Sant’Angelo in Rome (built 134 AD) to Øresund Bridge (built 1995): bridges connect and allow encounter through the transition. London Bridge built immediately after Brooklyn Bridge as a way of controlling the passage of ships but also communicating different parts of the city.
Access and Social
Through this mode of transit, social aspects naturally take shape in connection with two things; the connection in the visual and the physical.
From an experiential standpoint, the journey across the bridge contains everyone from children to adults, from all over the world. We documented the experience on an April Saturday mid-afternoon hours and found that the bridge is very full and mostly full of tourists and salesmen, leaving minimal space for cyclists. It is a dangerous experience for cyclists, despite several police carts being parked on the bridge to help regulate. According to a 2019 study, this is the peak time of the week. In terms of monthly trends, the peak usage maxes out in July at 23,380 per month, while hitting a low during January at 8,255 per month.
While the number of pedestrians was overwhelming, there were a few cyclists that dared to cross the bridge during peak hours. The peak in cyclists from Brooklyn to Manhattan has a range of 1 per hour in the middle of the night on weekdays, to 173 per hour during morning work commutes. Traveling in the other direction (Manhattan to Brooklyn), the cyclist commute ranges from 1 per hour in the late-night hours on weekdays, to 169 per hour during evening commutes. Putting this into context makes the Brooklyn Bridge very directional, which means everything from the social and environmental changes depending on the time. On the weekends, the correlation according to time is very much the same, with the peak cyclists being about 50% of what they are on the weekdays (NYCDOT).
During these peak hours, how can we resolve the coexistence of the cyclists and pedestrians? How do we help encourage the social aspect of the bridge, taking advantage of the views, while simultaneously allowing commuters to efficiently and safely transverse the East River?
Environment
The East River is a saltwater tidal estuary. It is not actually a river, it is a tidal strait, and connects the Upper New York Bay to Long Island Sound. It changes its direction of flow frequently and fluctuates in its current, amplified by its narrowness and variety of depths.
Throughout most of its history, the East River has been the receptacle for the city’s garbage and sewage. “Night men” who collected “night soil” from outdoor privies, would dump their loads into the river. Even after the Croton and New Croton Aqueducts gave rise to indoor plumbing, the waste that was flushed away into the sewers, where it mixed with ground runoff, made its way into the river untreated. By the 1850s, this runoff caused eutrophication caused by an increase in algae and a decrease in other wildlife, such as the oyster beds that became unsafe to eat because of their natural filtration of the water.
As of 2007, the river has been cleaner than it has in decades. In 2010, it was classified as Use Classification I, which means it can be used for boating and fishing although the river is still unsafe to swim in due to pollution and it’s aggressive speed. Projects such as+Pool aim to filter water and make the river a place in which to swim -at least within a confined area. Thanks to cleanups and regulations of pollution and development, the East River has shown signs of recovering biodiversity. However, some invasive species such as the European Green Crab, have created imbalances within the estuary and with increasing climate change, the future biodiversity of the habitat is in flux.
Thoughts
The bridge’s spatiality between different users has not adapted over time. As the volume of users has shifted and multiplied, reimagination is needed in the way that the bridge is socially and functionally experienced.
We are thinking how can we trigger inspiration in the places we transit on a daily basis? –especially when they are only space we move across and barely spend time or attention?
The emergence of COVID-19 has started to change the way we interpret space and gathering in a time where density is not only being viewed as a social construct but one of health. Only time will tell the effect it will have on social life, public space and urbanism in the long term.
// Dear reader, do you have any ideas? Please leave a comment if you have any questions, ideas, or anything else to say.
