Court House Plaza about to be closed to pedestrians?

updated photo april 11 2014 Worth St. and Mulberry

Around the time that Osama Bin Laden's son in law, Suleiman Abu Ghaith, was being tried at the Federal Court House on Worth and Mulberry Street, we noticed two small guard booths had sprung up. These two white low quality structures were placed at either end of a public plaza that sits between The Moynihan Court House and the back entrance to the U.S. Supreme Court building.

We can't help but think that the appearance of these two guard booths (currently unmanned) signify the eventual closing of the much-used public plaza that is home to Maya Lin's sculpture installation "Sounding Stones" created in 1996 - Commissioned by the US General Services Administration's Art in Architecture Program .

Lin says of the work  "I design works to create an intimate dialogue with the viewer, allowing a place of contemplation, sometimes an incorporation of history, always a reliance on time, memory, and a passage or journey. The relation between the viewer and the artwork does not require a knowledge of a specific language of forms, but instead relies on a direct empathetic response to the work. This experiential reading of the work, utilizing modulations in the light, sound, texture, materiality, subtle changes in height, depth, or grade, has helped define my work." 

If you ever had the pleasure to experience this sculpture as it was intended, before the barricades cordoned off the area around the sculptures, you would hear a wonderful gurgling noise from fountains within each stone. It seemed fitting that Lin's sculptures enticed the participant to walk up close, place their ear next to the holes and listen intently as this is what we're expected to do in a Court of law. Ironic then, that the whole auditory experience is removed from this piece by the placement of barricades, not to mention the obvious visual message that "security" trumps art in the eyes of Homeland Security.

How much do we have to give up in the name of "security"? To that extent just how effective are these measures anyway? Just last week a teenage boy was able to reach the top of the Freedom Tower ALONE.  A few years ago Police Headquarters was the sight of a mugging under non-functioning surveillance cameras. And in January a court officer was violently mugged on Court House property while she exited the building.

The closure of public plazas has done nothing to enhance the safety of residents and pedestrians, one can argue that in fact the lack of pedestrian activity makes the area prone to crime. 

When the Moynihan Court House was first opened there were lovely benches and trees immediately to the side of the court house which were designed for the public to use. The community used these inherently peaceful plazas to do tai chi and play chess. Sadly these benches and the stone sculptures are now off limits, and perhaps the entire thoroughfare will be closed. 

Updated April 11 2014, sculptures are now fully barricaded as are the benches, and trees.

click to enlarge photo

Updated April 11 2014

click to enlarge photo

FROM THE DOWNTOWN EXPRESS NEWSPAPER March 13th 2014:

Under Cover, March 13, 2014

March 13, 2014 | Filed under: Under Cover | Posted by: admin

TERROR TRIAL

Jan Lee, one of the Chinatown community leaders who has fought against many of Lower Manhattan’s post 9/11 street closures, tells us the Downtown federal trial of Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, Osama bin Laden’s son-in-law,  doesn’t seem to have worsened the traffic problems, but it does appear to have prompted the installation of an unsightly new security booth that is so far not been operational.

The biggest problem with the booth, Lee said, is it gets in the way at the Worth St. public plaza outside the Moynihan Courthouse. He fears that the plaza may close again as it did for several years in the ‘00s, which would close a shortcut to the subways and mar Maya Lin’s sculptures, which have auditory sounds designed to be experienced up close.

Adding insult to injury, Lee said, the booth is the “cheapest-looking, Home Depot piece of [crap].”

UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE

Turns out that the fencing and barricades were placed there

for the building of an addition to the existing courthouse.

What that addition will function as has yet to be revealed, metal detectors? screening?

See photo below of the rendering of the addition to the building.

Feng Shui - City says to Chinatown "Feng PHOOOEY!"

Last night Community Board 3 hosted a presentation by Stantec, the firm hired by the City of NY and D.O.T. to design the plaza and Park Row promenade for the reconstruction of Chatham Square. Part of the reconstruction plan involves a totally new plaza, 27,000 sq. ft. of space, surrounding the Kim Lau Memorial arch already in the center of the square.
The presentation was accompanied by beautifully rendered computer generated images of what was to come once the Chatham Square reconstruction was complete. The drawings were obviously painstaking in their detail and scope and represented the City's vision for Chatham Square with precise detail.

What was missing is what has always been missing, the sensitivity to the community in which the plaza (remarkably similar to a skateboard park) would reside. Except for the color red, there were no indicators that this plaza, over scaled and expansive in size, was in the middle of the largest Chinese population on the East Coast of America. It could have been in Atlanta, or Boise, or Washington D.C. In fact, in showing the hand outs to a variety of people without telling them this plaza was to reside in Chinatown no one thought it was particularly Asian in any sense. No one has guessed it was designed for Chinatown.

CCRC members asked the folks at Stantec, who went through the trouble of bringing full color large format renderings to hand out with versions in English and in Chinese, why Feng Shui was never considered for this plaza. A culture that is five thousand years old, who has to this day a deep rooted belief system based on energy flow, wind and water and its relationship to prosperity and health, would surely benefit from the CONSIDERATION of this belief system in the design of a 27,000 sq. ft. plaza being plopped in their neighborhood for generations. This consideration was absent from the presentation because it was absent from the minds of all involved. There was no defense to the criticism that this plan was culturally insensitive, just blank stares. It was as though someone just called out the elephant in the room.

At no point in fact, at any presentation on planning, roadways, landscaping, or park space was Feng Shui even mentioned. In all fairness there was a mention of a fountain in the middle of the plaza, whose shape was that of a donut, as being "culturally significant" to the Chinese. Convenient that the one item in the plan that was pointed out as being a "nod" to Chinese culture was also innocuous enough to be insignificant to the non-Chinese who would inherit Chinatown after the Chinese have been displaced entirely.

Given the resources that we have in the 21st century, the internet being one of them, jet travel being another and $8 milion being spent on the plaza yet another, The City could have and should have expressed an "overabundance" (a very favorable Chinese concept) of cultural sensitivity for a plaza that no one approved in the first place.

Sadly, what could be an opportunity for America's best Asian American talent has degraded into a political bulldozer project that ultimately looks like a skate board park in a suburban cul de sac, but then again, didn't Guiliani want all of NYC to look like that - Good Work on the Guiliani-Follow-Through Mike.

City to Chinatown: "Feng PHOOOEY to you!"