Upper Room Laid Low

Despite Last-Minute Efforts to Save It, Castellated Courtyard is Demolished

The ear-splitting whine of saws cutting into stone at the Albany Street cul de sac began at 8am. A few onlookers, bundled against a cold wind coming off the Hudson River, gathered to bear witness to the demolition of the sculptural plaza Upper Room, but they were outnumbered by construction workers. Jackhammers soon joined the chorus and a heavy banging sound provided a bass line, its source not visible behind construction screens.

Upper Room stood at Albany Street and the Battery Park City esplanade for 39 years, until November 12, 2025. The colonnaded, open-air peristyle was a giddy pastiche of cultural references, visual allusions, and architectural styles ranging from Hindu to Christian to Mesoamerican, and became the venue for events as disparate as toddlers’ birthday parties and executive business meetings, in the process weaving itself into the fabric of the neighborhood.

Created by artist Ned Smyth, Upper Room is being torn down to make way for resiliency measures planned by the Battery Park City Authority (BPCA), to harden the community and much of adjacent Lower Manhattan against climate change, sea-level rise, and extreme weather events.

“The BPCA has the legal power to do this,” observed Dr. Michele H. Bogart, a professor emeritus of art history at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. “This piece represents an important period in public art, a late-20th-century modern or post-modern style. They were often made at a grand scale, which makes them hard to relocate, even though it can be done. But that means they are among the most vulnerable works to destruction.”

“I’m very familiar with the process used in cases like this, and I’m not seeing a process here,” she said. Professor Bogart once served as vice president of the City’s Public Design Commission, which oversees art on publicly owned land, and now serves on that agency’s Conservation Advisory Group. “This is disappointing, because the BPCA created an exemplary method when they first commissioned public art pieces, like Upper Room, in the 1980s and 90s. They were advised by experts, who recruited artists whose work was deemed important. And they also believed that art was integral to the landscape and fabric of Battery Park City.”

“In this case, they didn’t pursue alternatives, even though they could have,” she said. “This sets a bad precedent.”

Melanie Brussat is a professional art conservator who was hired by the BPCA six years ago to assess the condition of Upper Room. In recent years, Upper Room columns had begun to show cracks, but Ms. Brussat believes the sculpture could have been saved. “A sculpture like this costs more to move than to destroy, but the BPCA has a responsibility as the stewards of a public collection,” she said. “The engineering firm that recommended destroying Upper Room is expert at overseeing resiliency projects, but doesn’t have extensive experience with public art pieces. The BPCA should have hired experts in moving and preserving art.”

In fact, such an expert lives in Battery Park City, and his apartment overlooks Upper Room. David Cohen is vice president and co-founder of Masterpiece International, a firm based in Lower Manhattan that specializes in transporting fine art objects for museums, galleries, auction houses and private collectors. (His company helped manage the 2019 transfer from Europe of a rail car once used to bring Jewish victims of the Holocaust to Auschwitz concentration camp, which was temporarily on display outside the Museum of Jewish Heritage.)

“Art is never meant to be destroyed, no matter what the situation is,” Mr. Cohen said. “The BPCA did not think this through properly. There were other ways to handle it.” Upon learning of the impending demolition of Upper Room, and on his own initiative, Mr. Cohen sent a team from his firm to evaluate the site several days ago. “I said, ‘there’s got to be a way to save this. My team told me, ‘it’s not easy, but it definitely can be done, even if at some expense.’”

“I’m glad the Authority is doing resiliency work, which is very important, but public art is part of the beauty of Battery Park City and this sculpture could have been saved,” he said. Mr. Cohen offered his assistance to the BPCA, saying he could help safely remove parts of Upper Room and even store pieces of the art temporarily, but the offer came days before the scheduled demolition, too late to change plans.

Lower Manhattan residents have voiced a stark sense of loss at the destruction of Upper Room. In multiple public meetings, members of Community Board 1 urged the Authority to explore every possible option to preserve the work. But the BPCA says that Upper Room was built in a way that makes relocation impossible without extensive damage, while its large size severely limits other sites that could accommodate it. The Authority says this is the only piece in its collection that will need to be demolished.

Raju Mann, president and CEO of the BPCA, said “Battery Park City is blessed with an incredible public art collection. We cherish this collection and have worked diligently over many years to ensure that the public artworks in Battery Park City will remain in place during construction of the upcoming resiliency project or return once work is complete. Unfortunately, one piece, Upper Room by artist Ned Smyth, sits above where we need to install critical infrastructure that is a necessary part of the resiliency project, and the work can neither be protected in place nor was it constructed in a way that would allow for relocation. We have communicated this over several years of public discussion, explained in detail in our public documents, and discussed with Mr. Smyth. We understand that the piece has been an indelible part of Battery Park City’s history and it will be missed by all of us. We look forward to working with our neighbors and the public art community to continue to expand our public art collection and build on this special legacy.”