Flowers and Recycled Planters Transform a Step Street in the Bronx
The dedication ceremony for the Bronx's ARTfarm brought together students from PS 73, NYDOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan, lead architect Valeria Bianco, and Bronx Museum executive director Holly Block.
A formal dedication for a creative urban intervention called ARTfarm brings flowers and greenery to a formerly barren step street in the Bronx. Architects Valeria Bianco, Christian Gonsalves, Shagun Singh, and Justin Taylor designed and built the project with help from Architecture for Humanity and the Bronx Museum of the Arts.
Parks Department Coopting NYC Skaters?
On Tuesday, the Parks Department cut the ribbon on the River Avenue pocket parks in the Bronx. It is the latest piece of the sprawling, long-overdue parks system promised by the Bloomberg administration in exchange for the parks sacrificed and taxes forgone in the name of the House That Steinbrenner Built (God rest his soul). But that is not what is truly interesting about the River Avenue park. What is is that it contains a skatepark. The fourth one to open this summer, in fact, preceded by new ramps and half-pipes at Hudson River Park (above), Flushing Meadows, and Robert Venable Park in Brooklyn’s East New York neighborhood. A very popular park opened last year as the first piece of the McCarren Park pool’s redevelopment. (This reporter saw young scalawags jumping the fence to get in even before it was finished, so eager were they to ollie about.) The Parks Department now has 11 skateparks under management, with more on the way. Read More
A Hub-bub in the Bronx
The city wants to turn the two lots bisected by the subway into a new mixed-use commercial center—a hub for the Hub.
Of all five boroughs, the Bronx arguably fell the furthest during New York City’s 1970s collapse (the decade that saw the infamous burning) while it has not seen nearly the revival of Brooklyn or Queens in recent years. There’s the new Yankees Stadium, and the Grand Concourse remains resurgent, but there is still much to be done. The city’s Economic Development Corporation is hoping to nudge things along just a bit east at the Hub, an architecturally and historically rich area centered around the intersection of 149th Street, Third Avenue, and Melrose Avenue. On two lots covering 112,000 square feet where the 2/5 Trains shoot out of the ground, the city is hoping to create a new mixed-use retail center that can anchor the area’s continued redevelopment. Read More
Kingsbridge Conundrum
That's a lot of empty space to fill. (Courtesy Bing Maps)
What to do with the Kingsbridge Armory, empty for more than two decades? That was the question the Related Companies answered with a proposal for a new mall, which was resoundingly rebuffed last year by the City Council, in part because that mall would have lacked union labor. The question of what to do with the mall was implicit in Related’s offer, as well, the suggestion being that without the mall, the massive nearly 600,000-square-foot building would continue to sit empty for more decades. Well, Bronx Borough President Rueben Diaz, Jr., one of the pols that led the fight against the mall, thinks he has an answer of his own, as the Observer reports, or at least he hopes the taskforce he’s appointed to come up with a solution does. As Diaz put it in a statement: Read More
Bowled Over by Bronx Architecture
The Lehman College Art Gallery has launched a new wesbite chronicling the architecture of the Bronx.
The Bronx isn’t exactly known for its architecture, excepting maybe the Grand Concourse, but the Lehman College Art Gallery is hoping to change that perception with a new and very impressive website chronicling the borough’s vast architectural heritage. (The gallery happens to be located in one of those hidden treasures, a campus building that was Marcel Breuer’s first project in the city.) The site, called simply Bronx Architecture, chronicles some 75 notable buildings scattered about the borough, ranging from the notable (the Bronx County Building, the Hall of Justice, the Kingsbridge Armory, new Yankee Stadium) to the obscure (Villa Charlotte Bronte, the Institute for Special Education, Williamsbridge Reservoir Keeper’s House). Read More
The Curious Case of Adolfo Carrion
The development in question, which has now raised many questions. (NYC HDC)
As if President Barack Obama hasn’t already had enough problems with vetting his Cabinet, it now turns out Adolfo Carrión, the former Bronx borough president and newly minted director of the Office of Urban Policy, may have failed to pay an architect who performed work on his house. An architect whose sizable project the Beep happened to sign off on just months before renovations took place. The Daily News broke the story on Monday and has been following it closely ever since. Read More
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