W'burg Landmarking Update: Domino and McCarren
We just got word that the Landmarks Preservation Commission will hold a public hearing on the Domino Sugar factory on Tuesday, June 26 at 1 Centre Street, 9th Floor North, starting at 9:30 a.m. In other North Brooklyn preservation news, at Wednesday night’s brainstorming session for the future design of McCarren Park, park officials told…
We just got word that the Landmarks Preservation Commission will hold a public hearing on the Domino Sugar factory on Tuesday, June 26 at 1 Centre Street, 9th Floor North, starting at 9:30 a.m. In other North Brooklyn preservation news, at Wednesday night’s brainstorming session for the future design of McCarren Park, park officials told the audience that they expected the buildings around the pool to be designated by the Landmarks Preservation Commission in July. (Evidently they were first calendared back in the 1990s but never designated; they were calendared again back in the first quarter of this year.) For that reason, when attendees broke out into tables of five or six people, the buildings had to be part of every plan. The report we got was that most groups came back with similar ideas: Multiple pools instead of one giant one, a permanent place for the skate park and some kind of concert performance space. Can anyone flesh this out?
vicandanielle [NY Times]
Photo by vicandanielle
YAY POOOLAID!
Am I the only one that thinks the Domino Sugar factory is UGLY?
Greenpoint has two excellent public schools and low crime – because of the poles.
I find the idea of poles looking down on other human beings outrageous for so many reasons. i mean many many reasons.
poolaid, I agree that 23 years later it matters little why the pool was closed, but I retold the story to address Kevin’s class-consciousness. And it wasn’t racism that kept the pool closed, it was the community’s inability to reach consensus on program/design, with the correllary that the price tag just kept going up why the debate continued. The Vollmer plan was estimated to cost $24M. That is more than a borough president and/or councilman can afford, and the project wasn’t yet a priority for the mayor.
There was also money allocated to reopen the pool in 2001 (The Vollmer Plan) but the events of Sept 11 put an end to that.
You can read a condensed history of the pool on http://www.poolaid.org.
Also, who cares why it was closed? Even if the racist theory is true (and many dispute it), that’s shameful, but not a good reason to keep the pool closed.
I think its more ethnicist (if there is such a word) than racist. Different cultures not mixing very well. The Poles probably feel different about Spanish Spanish then PR Spanish for example.
That shot of the baths reminds me of the ruins at the Forum
Kevin, no. There was money allocated for the repair of McCarren Park Pool in the early-80s. SOME Greenpoint residents (not to tar the entire neighborhood) opposed the renovation because they did not like people from outside the area coming to Greenpoint. Xenophobic at the least, and racist if it referred to latinos from the Southside and blacks from Bushwick.
Over the ensuing years, various factions fought over the design for the pool (preserve exactly as designed, modify, replace with another type of recreation) and the City shied away from the fray. All the while the price tag climbed year after year, eventually making it impossible for anyone but the mayor to have sufficient funds to fix the pool.
Hmmmm…when Greenpoint was just another neighborhood way out there in Brooklyn, the pool was permitted to rust, rot and otherwise deteriorate.
Now that big money has shown up in the streets surrounding the park, there’s a rush to landmark the pool buildings.
Coincidence?
http://www.forgotten-ny.com