Newly Opened Public Space Displays the Vaulting Ambitions of Gotham Park
The administration of Mayor Eric Adams has reopened one-third of an acre of park space beneath the Brooklyn Bridge, newly rehabilitated with more than a dozen tall shade trees (among them oaks, elms, and Japanese pagoda trees), plus 16 park benches. The space had been closed for more than a decade, and was slated to remain off limits until the 2030s.
Situated on the north flank of the Brooklyn Bridge (between Park Row and Rose Street), this section of the Brooklyn Bridge anchorage known as the Arches became publicly accessible on November 18, after it was “temporarily” closed 14 years ago for use as a staging area to facilitate maintenance work on the span above, and never reopened. In 2020, an online petition calling for the area to be made available for public use garnered more than 45,000 signatures, and Community Board 1 passed numerous resolutions demanding that the space be reopened. The City’s Department of Transportation responded to these demands by saying that it would need to occupy the park space well into the 2030s for Brooklyn Bridge maintenance projects. That agency reversed course when ordered by the Mayor’s office to take a fresh look at the proposal to reopen the space.
“Public space in Manhattan is precious,” said Deputy Mayor for Operations Meera Joshi. “Every acre counts for the people who live, work in, and visit our bustling metropolis.” Ydanis Rodriguez, DOT Commissioner, added, “for the last decade, our crews have worked hard to restore the iconic Brooklyn Bridge, creating a cleaner, brighter, and safer bridge to last us another century. Now that this critical restoration is nearing a close, we are returning another portion of the Arches to the community. For residents of and visitors to Lower Manhattan and Chinatown, even small public spaces are precious – and we will continue working with the community to open even more of the Arches in the months ahead.”
The opening of this new park space follows the May 2023 unveiling of a one-acre section of the Arches that had been refurbished to include a skateboard park and multiple courts for basketball, shuffleboard, and pickleball.
There is more to come. The largest section of the Arches – up to 11 additional acres – will become available in the next few years. The transformation is largely the result of advocacy by a community group that calls itself Gotham Park, after the open space it is helping to create.
The organization’s president and co-founder, Rosa Chang, said, “Gotham Park has worked in tandem with DOT to reopen the area, and applauds the hard work of the women and men of DOT and City Hall who have labored to open this treasured next section for public use. A project as complicated as the Arches, spanning multiple agencies, bureaucracies, stages, and hurdles, requires the focus, time and hard work of an enormous number of people behind the scenes.”
Gotham Park aims to reopen and revitalize six outdoor sections of this area (three each on the north and south sides of the Bridge), stretching from Park Row to South Street. The plan would bring to life the Vaults (the soaring, arched brickwork spaces that comprise the Brooklyn Bridge’s anchorage), converting them for the first time to public use. The scenario outlined by Gotham Park notes these spaces would house, “ideally a New York Public Library combined with a Brooklyn Bridge Museum housing a collection of documents and artifacts from the design and construction of the Brooklyn Bridge.” This network of indoor and outdoor spaces would ultimately connect with the East River Park and Greenway, now under construction along the waterfront, beneath the Brooklyn Bridge.
The Gotham Park proposal calls for the creation of the new park in multiple phases. The first of these was accomplished in May 2023, and the second stage began on November 18. The final stage will include the largest open spaces, adjacent to the East River. Through each of these phases, the Gotham Park vision will create new playgrounds and active recreation facilities, while also revitalizing significant pieces of infrastructure, such as the Park Row tunnel, which affords walkers and bikers a connection between the Financial District and Chinatown.
“These are just the beginning steps of a long journey,” Ms. Chang says. “But we are so gosh darned excited to start this journey, which was and is so hard fought. In our community, which has so little open space, where communities have been long separated from each other by a half-mile-long infrastructure and construction fences and walls, we are so excited to literally start breaking down the barriers and creating space to build relationships and community.”