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SHoP's pedestrian bridge is a lesson on rebuilding Lower Manhattan.
By Jonathan Ringen
The Metropolis Observed
July 2002
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SHoP's new Rector Street pedestrian bridge crosses the busy multi-lane West
Street, reconnecting Battery Park City--which was isolated by the WTC collapse--to
the rest of downtown. SHoP's design wraps a prefabricated superstructure
manufactured by MAYBEY Bridge and Shore with perforated cladding that allows
fluorescent light to emanate from the 5-foot-long "light planks"
in the floor of the bridge at night.
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The temporary Rector Street pedestrian bridge, designed by New York architecture
firm SHoP/Sharples Holden Pasquarelli is the first infrastuctural
element to go up in Lower Manhattan since September 11. As such, the $3
million project provides a microcosmic illustration of the collaborative
effort it's going to take to rebuild downtown.
Battery Park City--home to residential neighborhoods, the World Financial
Center, and cultural institutions like the Museum of Jewish Heritage--is
separated from the rest of Manhattan by West Street, a heavy-traffic
corridor fed from the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel. West Street also serves as
the main conduit for the recovery effort at the World Trade Center site,
a few blocks north of the bridge. Prior to the towers' collapse the community
was served by two pedestrian bridges, but one was damaged and the other
destroyed in the attack. "The at-grade crossings now have heavy construction
equipment and vehicles moving back and forth," traffic engineer
Sam Schwartz says. "It's been very confusing trying to cross."
Commissioned by the Battery Park City Authority (BPCA) within weeks of the
attack, the bridge was originally scheduled to be completed in November.
But it didn't happen until May, in large part because of the surprisingly
complicated nature of the small-scale enterprise. "There were dozens
of agencies and authorities to deal with," says Stephanie Gelb, the
BPCA's vice president of planning and design. "Part of the community
wanted a bridge to get across more easily, and part didn't want any people
crossing into Battery Park City. They said they were perfectly happy to
cross that death-defying intersection at West Thames Street."
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The openings in the cladding allow natural light to penetrate during the
day while limiting tourists from using the bridge as a WTC observation
deck.
Photos: Courtesy SHoP
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Although SHoP's clients were the BPCA, the actual construction of the bridge
was the responsibility of the New York State Department of Transportation.
"The agreement was that they would hire the designer and we would build
it," says project manager Heather Sporn, a landscape architect who
works for the DOT. "It made sense, because it was over our roadway
and our contractors were on the site already. When the events of September
11 occurred we were getting ready to finish the Route 9A reconstruction
project [West Street is its downtown section], which had been going on for
many years."
The site for the bridge was chosen to provide both Battery Park City residents
and World Financial Center commuters access to the closest open subway stop,
at Rector Street. One of the main sticking points for community residents
was the bridge's orientation, which was originally to cut across one of
the few patches of grass in the neighborhood. "The bridge is on a skew
because the community brought their fifth-graders out to the community
board meeting and said, 'You can't destroy our only green space,'"
SHoP's Bill Sharples says. "And you know what? Greg [Pasquarelli] and
I were convinced."
The bridge is currently planned for approximately two years of use, according
to Sporn, although no one yet knows what developments will render it unnecessary.
One area plan under consideration would put the high-volume traffic
in a tunnel below West Street, leaving easily traversed local traffic
on the surface.
Despite Gelb's assertion that "everything about this bridge was controversial,"
Sharples, Schwartz, and Sporn all see the process as one in which disparate
parties were able to collaborate toward a mutually acceptable solution.
"It shows how quickly things get done when people cooperate,"
Schwartz says. "A bridge can be built in a couple of months."
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