Tuesday, July 20, 2021 – FEW ARE GREAT IDEAS AND MORE ARE ONLY FUNNY RENDERINGS
TUESDAY, JULY 20, 2021
The
420th Edition
From the Archives
Our East River:
The Good,
the Bad and the Ugly
Stephen Blank
Our East River: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Stephen Blank
We Islanders know that the East River is not a river, that it’s a salt water tidal estuary that connects the Atlantic Ocean in Long Island Sound with the ocean in Upper New York Bay. We know that the East River is 16 miles long and that the tide changes direction 4 times a day. We know that our F train travels under the river at one of its deepest points.
So what’s new? Hang on.
First, the Good
The construction we see on the Manhattan side of the river, north of the Queensboro Bridge, will be the East Midtown Greenway and this looks to be really good. The East Midtown Greenway is part of the Manhattan Waterfront Greenaway project to build a 32.5-mile waterfront path running continuously around the entire island. The Greenway will total more than 1,000 acres—a space larger than Central Park. Joggers, walkers, cyclists, and everyone else from every neighborhood should have access to the Greenway. The project inched closer to reality in April when Mayor de Blasio announced the city would spend $723 million to complete the project by 2029.
What we see from our island will fill a major gap in the Greenway along the East River between East 38th and East 61st Streets, providing waterfront access and open space for the East Midtown community and the public at large.
What we see from our island will fill a major gap in the Greenway along the East River between East 38th and East 61st Streets, providing waterfront access and open space for the East Midtown community and the public at large.
Here are several renderings of the East Midtown Greenway extension. Good.
NYC Economic Development Corporation https://urbanize.city/nyc/post/see-new-renderings-100m-east-midtown-greenway-extension
THE BAD
The Bad.
OK, I admit I’ve tricked you a bit. Unless you speak German. I meant “Bad” (Bath) or more accurately “Schwimmbad”. And this would not be bad at all, if it actually happens.
The East River today is clean enough to swim in. On most days, the levels of bacteria meet federal safety guidelines, according to state and local officials. Even when the bacteria levels in the water are high, it’s unlikely that swimmers will get sick. If they do get sick, the severity will probably be more along the lines of eating bad takeout than setting off a cholera outbreak. But who wants to swim in the East River?
So the City has approved plans for a floating pool in the East River that would also filter large amounts of river water – which should (note, New York City definition of “should”) be completed in a couple of years.
Jessica Cherner writes in Architectural Digest that the idea originated with a group that has pushed for building giant plus sign–shaped floating pool just north of the Manhattan Bridge. Without any chemicals and additives, the pool would filter more than 600,000 gallons of East River water that floats through the pool’s barriers every day. Archie Lee Coates IV and Jeff Franklin of the design firm PlayLab, and Dong-Ping Wong and Oana Stanescu of the architecture firm Family, originally conceived of the idea for + POOL back in 2010, but like anything worth doing, it took a while to actually become a reality. After all, the group had to (and continues to) raise funds, develop working filtration systems, and test them for accuracy and efficiency. And after years of research and testing, the four friends have managed to prove that + POOL’s tech actually works.
And now that the city has allowed + POOL to officially drop anchor in a specific location, the real challenge begins: raising between $20 million and $25 million to give New Yorkers the Olympic-size warm weather haven they’ve been dreaming of for years. Much like the projects of other inventive entrepreneurs who had to hit pause on their brilliant ideas at the start of 2020, + POOL is finally starting to pick up steam again. Now that + POOL has an official home in the East River, eager New Yorkers may be one step closer to fearlessly diving into the salty water, but it’s still a little ways off, considering construction could take up to two years.
Renderings courtesy of + POOL
Renderings courtesy of + POOL
And now, the Ugly.
Not necessarily ugly. But bizarre ideas for the East River have been bruited about.
The first is a new plan to drain the East River.
In 2017 New York Magazine asked several leading architects to speculate on visionary projects for the future of New York City. One, Mark Foster Gage, proposed draining the East River to create a new “East River Valley” which would include 15,000 acres of new gardens, farms and parks in the very center the City.
Their proposal says “New York City is structured by two rivers, which is very selfish for a city—as it is common knowledge that a city can get by on one. To be even more accurate—one of them, the ‘East River,’ in question, isn’t even actually a river at all – it’s a tidal estuary. Geologists also refer to this condition as a flooded valley. That is to say that under that flood prone pseudo-river cutting thorough our fair city, there is a beautiful and fertile valley awaiting rescue. And so, we propose to drain the East ‘River’- for multiple reasons. The first is that storm surges at a scale of Hurricane Harvey, if occurring at the location of the East river, could annihilate vast sections of city upwards of 15,000 acres across the Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn and Manhattan — an area nearly 20 times as large as Central Park. One solution being proposed to combat this is the construction of levees such as the Lower Manhattan ‘Big U’ that aim to deflect water from particular areas of the city—yet leaving others to flood entirely unprotected. In fact, if you wanted to protect the aforementioned boroughs from a Hurricane Harvey-sized storm surge, you would need to build over 40 miles of new seawall along the river’s entire coast.
We propose to, instead, build three strategically placed new dams, totaling less than 1 mile in length. In this process, New York City gains a new ‘East River Valley’ that includes 15,000 acres of new gardens, farms and parks in the very center of our urban fabric. Catastrophe prevention is always better when it includes fresh produce. This new, infrastructure-free, deep land found in this now accessible valley offers an unparalleled opportunity for the city to engage in the construction of massive, next-generation, geothermal wells to power the next century of New York City’s energy needs. Air-conditioned subway stops, occasional water ferries and recycled Metro cards are not sufficient to either save our city or propel it into the new millennium. For both we need to consider larger, bolder ideas that use foresight as fuel and potential risks as unique opportunities that can power a new generation of sustainable and urban scale innovations. The alternative is to await the rising waters of our proverbial winter, and watch the coming floods wash away our city, our future, and hopefully all evidence of our shortsighted complacency.”
And finally, on the East River and on Roosevelt Island, we present the Mandragore Building.
Proposed by the French architecture firm Rescubika, this would be a 2,418-foot tower on Roosevelt Island (to its tip, the Empire State is 1,454 feet high). With wood construction materials, 36 wind turbines, 8,300 shrubs, 1,600 trees, 83,000 square feet of plant walls, and nearly 23,000 square feet of solar panels, it would be the world’s tallest “carbon sink” tower–one that absorbs more CO2 than it releases.
renderings via Rescubika Studio
The tree-studded, 160-story futuristic proposal is planned to loosely resemble a mandrake plant — an anthropomorphic, human-like form. – with a base like a cruise ship morphing into a gleaming twisty tower a la Salvador Dali. “The symbolism of the body confronts us with our own destiny, the one that reminds us that we must preserve our environment in order to live in symbiosis with nature,” the architects say. And no, it isn’t clear what would happen to Cornell Tech. But it’s only a dream though it might be fun to see it on our island.
A little summer reading. Lots of imagination on the East River, but one thing for sure. It’ll be great when the Manhattan Waterfront Greenaway project finishes up.
Stephen Blank
RIHS
July 2, 2021
TUESDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY SEND TO ROOSEVELTISLANDHISTORY@GMAIL.COM
MONDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY
This is Mr. Romeo, a resident of the
WILDLIFE FREEDOM FOUNDATION SANCTUARY
IN SOUTHPOINT PARK.
OOPS! MY COMPUTER ATE ALL THE RESPONSES TO TODAY’S
TO THE FELINE IDENTIFICATION.
Thanks to all our subscribers for the wonderful comments about our new
FDR HOPE MEMORIAL.
Please take the opportunity to visit the park and experience this new landmark.
Text by Judith Berdy
Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS
Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website
Edited by Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
Sources
https://www.mfga.com/east-river-valley-proposal
https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/new-york-city-approved-floating-pool-east-river
https://www.theverge.com/2013/7/8/4503362/brookyln-bridge-swim-nyc-swim
https://urbanize.city/nyc/post/see-new-renderings-100m-east-midtown-greenway-extension
https://nypost.com/2020/09/21/roosevelt-island-building-proposal-has-air-scrubbing-feature/
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