Brooklyn Waterfront Greenway
The Brooklyn Waterfront Greenway was conceived as a ribbon of green along the entirety of the Brooklyn waterfront, providing access and connectivity to the waterfront with mobility options for coastal communities.
Background and History
19th Century docks fueled a robust industrial waterfront until decline began in the mid-20th Century. This waterfront corridor is now being adapted to new uses.
Marvel Architects has assisted with design and realization of several nodes along the length of the greenway, including the Naval Cemetery Landscape, the plaza of Building 77, Columbia Street Space and the Columbia Street Connector.
Projects engage with the route of the greenway in different ways, whether passing by an adjacent site, fully passing through, or creating new connections.
Naval Cemetery Memorial Landscape
Built adjacent to the greenway at a former cemetery site, stairs lead through a threshold to an open landscape. ©Max Touhey
Naval Cemetery Memorial Landscape
A boardwalk of black locust meanders the perimeter of the 2 acre, now a natural meadow with native plantings.
©Max Touhey
Naval Cemetery Memorial Landscape
The Naval Cemetery Landscape provides connection to communities, history and the the waterfront.
©Max Touhey
Columbia Street Waterfront Space
An underutilized DOT site is redesigned as public landscape space where a neighborhood ends at the former waterfront edge.
Columbia Street Waterfront Space
The greenway route moves into the far edge of the quarter-mile long site, allowing public pedestrian activity along the street and creating a natural buffer along the adjacent container port.
Building 77
This existing 18-story building sits along a portion of the Brooklyn Greenway. A recent renovation has created a public plaza with direct connection to the new alignment of the Greenway along Flushing Avenue, one of the highest-used bicycling routes in Brooklyn. ©Daniel Byrne
- Location
- Brooklyn, New York
- Client
- Brooklyn Greenway Initiative
- Typology
- Public, Recreational, Park /Recreation, Transportation
- Size
- 5+ Acres
- Design Team
- Columbia Street: Scott Demel, Patricia Bacalao, Shane Neufield Naval Cemetery: Scott Demel, Zachary Cohen, Shan Chen, Vince Lee Building 77: Scott Demel, David Jackowski, Andres Loewy, Siyuan Li, Andy Lin, Michael Stewart, Paul Chan, Carol Nung, Carly Berger, Makenzie Leukart, See Jia Ho
- Consultants
- BGI Co‐Founders Milton Puryear, Brian McCormick, and Meg Fellerath, Regional Plan Association, Congresswoman Nydia M. Velázquez (D‐NY 7th District), Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects, WE Design Landscape Architecture, eDesign Dynamics, Larry Weaner Landscape Associates, Horticultural Society of New York, Dewberry
- Awards
- 2018 AIANY + ASLANY Transportation + Infrastructure Design Excellence Awards
- Photography Credits
- ©Max Touhey and Daniel Byrne
