Up in the Air and Down on the Ground

Downtown Brooklyn's Flatbush Avenue Booms

Flatbush in the sky.

If you haven't been to downtown Brooklyn lately, you're in for a shock. In 2009, the last time I ran the New York City Marathon, the tallest thing near the intersection of Flatbush and Fulton was the Williamsburgh Savings Bank Tower. In fact, it was the tallest building in Brooklyn, and had been since it opened in 1929. Today, there is a whole bevy of buildings in the neighborhood that top out above the Williamsburgh Savings Bank. 

Foremost among them is the first supertall skyscraper in Brooklyn, currently known as the Brooklyn Tower. You can see it lurking quietly in the back of the picture above. (A supertall skyscraper is more than 300 meters, or 984 feet, tall.) 

All this redevelopment flows from a 2004 rezoning of the area, designed to reinforce downtown Brooklyn as New York's third major downtown, after Midtown and Lower Manhattan. What's actually happening, though, is less about increasing office space and more about providing more apartments, both condominium and rental. The Brooklyn Tower, for instance, plans to sell about 150 condos and rent an additional 425 apartments.

Here's another look at the Brooklyn Tower, from Flatbush. 

All this redevelopment is not limited to Flatbush Avenue. Let's take a few steps down Fulton to Ashland, where we have the building below.

I think this is my favorite of all the new buildings that have gone up in this area.

I do enjoy looking at these sculptures in the sky. It's something of a guilty pleasure for me, because I think there is a tendency for all of us to say, first, that the building looks great from the outside, and, second, that the views realtors can show to prospective tenants are spectacular, and then call it a day.

But what about a guy walking down the street? What is my experience at ground level? Let's go back to the Brooklyn Tower. Here's a shot of the street facade, which was still under construction when I took the picture last summer.

There were a lot of construction barriers in this neighborhood last summer, along with a lot of construction vehicles, so I don't think it would be right to judge the planned street experience until it's fully in place. I will say I'm hopeful. The Fulton Street mall is only a few feet from the Brooklyn Tower. It's a pedestrian-priority shopping street and a very enjoyable experience. 

The Traffic on Flatbush

All we need to do, in my view, is extend that experience onto Flatbush. And there's the rub. The traffic on Flatbush is nightmarish. It comes pouring off the Manhattan Bridge and flows like a torrent in spring directly down Flatbush towards Grand Army Plaza, at the tip of Prospect Park, and to points beyond. Along the way it interacts with a number of cross streets, most notably Atlantic Avenue, another nightmarish urban highway.

NYCDOT (the New York City Department of Transportation) has been doing a variety of things to try to calm the traffic on Flatbush and generally make for a more pleasant pedestrian experience. As you can see in the photo, there are plantings in the well-armored raised median. At the end of each block there is a waiting area for pedestrians - perhaps not an island, but a peninsula -  also well armored.  (For some interesting work-in-progress photos, click here. For pictures of the completed pedestrian refuges, click here.)

NYCDOT has also been doing what it can to rationalize vehicular traffic. One of my favorite changes was elimination of the left-hand turn across traffic at Myrtle, which I had to negotiate when coming to Fort Greene from the Manhattan Bridge. I'm much happier with the right-hand turn that takes you onto a little stub of Myrtle that stops at Brooklyn Commons Park. You then do a 180 and drive straight across Flatbush and into Fort Greene. (Until very recently, Brooklyn Commons was called MetroTech Center. For a story, click here.)

Hoarding Art

If we can go back to the ground-level photo of the Brooklyn Tower. Allow me to guide you through one of my pet peeves. Have a look at the plywood sheets fencing off the construction area. The British call these construction barriers hoardings. In the past these generally became the home of many, many advertising posters. (I'm particularly remembering circus posters for some reason.) Nowadays it seems these placards have gone away, and in their place we have - green paint. At least at the Brooklyn Tower.

If you go a few blocks away, near the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), you can see the possibility of these surfaces. 

This effort strikes me as less orderly and more whimsical than green plywood. I like that.

While we're in the BAM neighborhood, let's have a look at something a bit more formal. This, believe it or not, is a bike rack in an empty lot. You lock onto the letters. It's called the BAM Bike Park, and you can read a little more about it by clicking here. 

The BAM neighborhood is an interesting transitional space between the high-rises on Flatbush and the low-rise brownstone belt - a lovely gift from the nineteenth century, when this part of Brooklyn became a home for the prosperous middle class. 

Other parts of the Flatbush area treat the small streets behind them as their backside, creating more of a no man's zone than a transitional area. Small streets that deserve better are relegated to exhaust louvers from ventilation systems, entrances to garages, and large plastic bags of garbage coming out of back doors.

But I come with a message of hope. Look at this picture, which is on Hudson just off of DeKalb.

NEWS FLASH: Service alleys don't have to be disgusting. They can even, if only intermittently, be fun. You want safe streets? You want happy streets? Put people on the street. They don't have to be two handsome young cops with a clown car. But it is a nice picture. I'm fond of it.

The Brownstone Belt

One of the great things about Flatbush is you're never very far from the brownstone belt. Because it's older, and it's seen a bit more of the world than its new neighbors on Flatbush, I think it is more open to experiment, trying different things. Maybe it's a bit more like the BAM transitional area, or maybe it just has its own approach to the world. Here's what hoarding art looks like in the brownstone belt.

The openness even extends to dogs. I ran into this little fellow outside a coffee shop on the Open Streets section of Willoughby. I've never seen a canine hitching post quite like the one he's tied to, so I thought I'd share. File it under street furniture.

Fort Greene Park

As the last stop on our little walking tour, we come to Fort Greene Park, for a lesson on monumentality from 1908. The tall column in the foreground is a memorial to the prison ship martyrs - thousands of Americans died near here during the Revolutionary War. The British were housing American prisoners on old ships parked in Wallabout Bay, which is where the Navy Yard is currently located. They died like flies from massive overcrowding, poor nutrition, lousy sanitation, and resultant disease. 

You'll notice Brooklyn's first supertall lurking in the background. I think the vertical striations on the supertall go well with the column's fluting.

So, yes, architects were doing cool stuff up in the air more than a century ago. But McKim, Mead, and White, the architects here, also paid careful attention to the ground level. Have a look at the eagle below. You can look him in the eye. I find myself a bit unsettled whenever I do so, which to me is a sign of good art. 

There are actually four of these eagles, marking the corners of the plaza from which the memorial column rises. So when you get tired of craning your neck trying to take in all of the memorial column, you can shift your gaze down to ground level and hang out with these bronze birds. (For more on the monument and the eagles, click here.)

See also Lafayette, We Were There; Fitting the Solution to the Problem; Transit Memories; South Portland Avenue, Brooklyn; Flexible Vanderbilt; Of Planters and Whimsy.