LIVING , Page 82Where the Skyline Meets the ShoreAfter a massive recycling effort, a lively neighborhood bloomsin the shadow of Wall StreetBy Bonnie Angelo
Along the waterfront on a sparkling day, languid groups linger
over low-cal drinks, sun themselves by the fountains, read and
daydream on shaded benches and fantasize about the grand boats tied
up at their feet.
This is New York City? Right. Lower Manhattan. Battery Park
City. At lunchtime, when the famous New York pace slows to idle,
the "suits" from the World Financial Center loosen their ties and
go down to the river to join couples, amazed tourists and mothers
with strollers. On a sun-splashed October day, this new
way-downtown nook hints of the Mediterranean.
"You'd never believe you're in New York," says Irving Cohen.
He and his wife Mary come in from suburban Long Island to visit
their grandson and enjoy the place. For Nancy Marshall of Kearny,
N.J., the scene is a revelation: "I went to school in this
neighborhood 30 years ago, and none of this was here. It's so
unexpected, so peaceful."
The grand visionary scheme has been more than two decades in
the making, but this year it has come into full flower. Almost
30,000 people work in the World Financial Center, four stunning
towers that won new laurels for internationally renowned architect
Cesar Pelli and Canada-based developers Olympia & York. In the
financial district, where the last broker to leave Wall Street used
to put out the cat each night, more than 6,000 residents have
settled into the thicket of 19 new apartment buildings, creating
a flourishing neighborhood. Upwards of 40 restaurants and glossy
shops have followed. This week ferry service from Hoboken, N.J.,
begins, after a 22-year hiatus, anchored to a handsome glass
terminal just north of the World Financial Center.
Battery Park City may be the ultimate in recycling: 24 acres
of earth that were scooped out to build the giant World Trade
Center a block away were dumped on the marshy edge of the Hudson
River, forming the nucleus of a new 92-acre chunk of land. And --
hallelujah! -- the river, which most New Yorkers rarely glimpse,
has been given back to the people, as Battery Park City embraces
the wide and wonderful Hudson. The shore has been beribboned by a
sculpture-studded esplanade, a mile-long stroll leading to the
South Cove. There, grasses and boulders are untamed, as the
riverbank might have been when Indians apprehensively watched
approaching sails. Says Sally-Jane Heit, an actress-writer who was
a 1982 "pioneer" in the first apartment tower: "It's a fantasy
world, a sculpted cutout. You sit there and listen to the primal
sound of the water whooshing."
The heart of the $4 billion development is the plaza, the great
outdoor living room for personal pursuits and free performances.
The plaza encompasses North Cove Yacht Harbor, which can berth 26
megayachts. "This harbor is ecologically pure," says developer
George Nicholson of Watermark Associates. "Until now, berthing a
yacht in New York was like parking your Picasso in the cellar."
Instead of producing the usual Manhattan-canyon gloom, the
planners have created 25 acres of parks, using space and air as
almost tangible materials. The city's most stunning new indoor
vista is the Winter Garden, a setting for concerts and gala charity
evenings or for noshing and newspaper reading. Its vaulted,
steel-ribbed glass roof soars 120 ft., resonant of the
crystal-palace splendors of the industrial age. A million-dollar
program of entertainment, ranging from rock artists to chamber
musicians and sponsored by the corporate giants who occupy the four
Financial Center towers, is designed to keep the Garden lively.
Open spaces and rampant luxury come high in New York,
suggesting a king-size dent in the public purse. But no, not a
penny. Private money and a dozen developers have transformed muck
into a showcase, under strict conditions demanded by the master
planners, architects Alexander Cooper and Stanton Eckstut, and the
Battery Park City Authority.
As the venture matured, there was some carping about elitism,
since both office and apartment prices are expensive. The rebuttal
is crisply cased in dollars: at least $1 billion, from ground (and
harbor) leases paid to the state, has been earmarked solely to
provide low- and moderate-income housing in other areas of the
city. Last month the first families moved into 924 newly renovated
units in the South Bronx, and work is under way on 700 apartments
in Harlem.
The vision for this monumental project was generated by
Governor Nelson Rockefeller back in 1965. The development would be
the city's first mixed-use multibuilding complex since his family
created Rockefeller Center in the 1930s, and it would give downtown
Manhattan a heart. The story goes that Rockefeller dashed off a
sketch of what he wanted.
When Governor Mario Cuomo inherited Battery Park City in 1983,
he issued a mandate: "Give it social purpose -- and give it a
soul." The $1 billion for housing gives purpose, and the soul is
flourishing, a lively urban soul that fulfills the two love letters
to New York spelled out uniquely in brass letters on the plaza
fence. From Walt Whitman: "City of the sea! . . . Proud and
passionate city -- mettlesome, mad, extravagant city!" And from the
late Frank O'Hara, a somewhat more acerbic poet: "I can't even
enjoy a blade of grass unless I know there's a subway handy, or a
record store or some other sign that people do not totally regret
life." Rest easy, both of you. You would like this place.
