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Showing posts from September, 2012

5 Things I Like about Jersey City

To be fair, this post is about the neighborhood around the Grove Street Path station and not about the entire city.  Check out this Ork-style poster of neighborhoods in Jersey City.  The five things I like are the variety of housing types , transit options , historic building preservation , parks , and although we only sampled one cafe, we are giving a special mention to the Beechwood Cafe . We arrived at Grove Street via the PATH train and left via the ferry at Liberty Landing.  In between arriving and departing, we played at Van Vorst Park of which I have only a photo of a flower (below). Photos of the Van Vorst Park can be seen here . Liberty State Park is on the waterfont and we strolled through it before boarding the ferry.  If you go, don't overlook the Morris Canal. We ate many delicious pastries from the Beechwood Cafe: croissant, chocolate chip (shortbread) cookie, and apple muffin.  The cappuccino was excellent. We made two stops at the cafe a

Updated: Collect Pond Park and the Canal Street connection

In June, The SoHo Memory Project blogged about the origins of Canal Street .  In that post, we learned that Canal Street arose as a tree-lined drainage canal between Collect Pond and the Hudson River.  In 1805 the City decided to drain the pond because its water had become polluted by industrial waste.  From the NYPL Digital Archives, here is a photograph of Canal Street in 1826.  Image: Perspective view of Canal Street, 1826, print screen from NYPL Digital Gallery ( source ) Were the trees American elms?  That streetscape was restorative in contrast to Canal Street today (see below). Image: Canal Street facing south towards Lafayette The sixty-foot deep spring-fed pond was used for picnics, ice skating, and one of "the first experimental steamboats" was launched there.  After the pond was drained, the site was filled with soil from an adjacent hill. Image: Collect Pond, 1796, print screen from NYPL Digital Gallery ( source ) Image: Map of the co

Before & After Green: Halcyon Commons

Image: The original site - a parking lot, all photographs courtesy of John Steere Halycon Commons is located in South Berkeley. The green space was once a 28-space parking lot. The impetus for the project came during the June 1992 solstice block party which was made possible by a temporary street closing. Residents wondered what it would be like to have a park in the space.  Beginning in October 1992, the Halcyon Neighborhood Association organized a community-based planning process to regenerate the site. At the end of a four-year process, the neighborhood association received project approval from the community and two municipal agencies, the Parks and Recreation Commission and the City Council. The City helped to prepare the site by removing the surface pavement. The City also provided funding which was supplemented by local business and volunteer labor. The park was dedicated in July 1996 and is maintained by the Friends of Halcyon Commons. Additional inform

ASLA 2012 Awards: Governors Island Master Plan

Image: View of Manhattan from Northern Historic District Governors Island opened to the public in 2010 but my first visits were made this summer.  The island is shaped like an ice cream cone.  Much of the time I spent on the island was in the ice cream section though I cycled the 2.2 mile perimeter of the island during Labor Day weekend. Image: Perimeter bike lane on southern edge of the island The island's Park and Public Spaces Master Plan by urban design & landscape architecture firm West8 received an ASLA 2012 Honor Award in the Analysis and Planning category .  In the plan, the ice cream is the Historic Northern District while the perimeter is known as the Great Promenade.  The demolition of former military housing in the southern section of the island began last week.  Forty acres of park and public spaces will be created in the southern section of the island of which 30 acres will be completed in Phase 1 .  Brick and concrete rubble will be stored on-site an

Before & After Green: East River Stormwater Vegetative Control

Image: East 120 Street and Paladino, pre-construction, courtesy of TreesNY NYC has a combined sewer system which overflows during heavy rain (and snow).  The city relies on both grey and green infrastructure to mitigate stormwater flows. One example of the latter is the Stormwater Vegetative Control or SVC project at East 120 Street and Paladino Avenue.  Nelson Villarrubia, executive director of the urban forestry nonprofit TreesNY , developed the concept. Image: East 120 Street and Paladino, construction, courtesy of TreesNY The site, pre-construction, was "barren, flooded and essentially [a] useless mass of concrete. Adjacent to a public school, at the base of the pedestrian bridge to the East River Esplanade, just 200 feet from the East River and seriously prone to flooding, the site was ideal for a stormwater mitigation project." Image: East 120 Street and Paladino, post-construction, courtesy of TreesNY TreesNY removed 640 square feet of concrete to bu

Coolroofing on 154th Street

When I think of a cool roof, I usually picture a green roof covered with vegetation.  But another popular method to cool a roof is to coat it white with a light-colored, reflective paint. I volunteered to install an extensive green roof at 594 Broadway of sedums, seeds, and cuttings in September 2010.  This spring, I watched the installation of a NYC °CoolRoof on 154th Street .  (It was my intention to help to paint the roof but an injury prevented me from doing so.) NYC °CoolRoofs was initiated three years ago as one of numerous strategies to reduce the city's greenhouse gas emissions by 30% by 2030.  Learn more about the city's sustainability master plan or PlaNYC here .  Cool roofs offer several benefits .  Coating a roof with a light colored material or paint reduces roof temperatures, internal building temperatures, carbon emissions and the urban heat island effect.  The impact of cooler internal temperatures is most acute for the top floors of a building.  Cool