From the September issue: Although there is always considerable risk involved in writing about an architectural project that has not yet broken ground, rarely have the perils been greater than in regard to the subject of this month’s column: an ambitious, and unprecedented subterranean park known as the Lowline. The renderings for this public space and cultural area, which would serve the inhabitants of the Lower East Side, look inspiring — as all renderings do and as all renderings should. The real question, however, is whether the Lowline is an inspired idea or one of the dumbest things anyone has come up with yet.
Near the approach to the Williamsburg Bridge on the Lower East Side and next to the Essex Street subway station on Delancey Street lies a one-acre expanse that was known in better times as the Williamsburg Bridge Trolley Terminal. When trolley cars were abandoned, the place fell dormant — and dormant it has remained for the past 60 years, a time capsule that few of those pounding the pavement above during that time had any idea existed. [more]