Opinion: How Parks Lose Their Playfulness
A few years ago, the Hudson River Park Trust floated an idea for a new island. Called Pier 55, it was to be a two-and-a-half-acre wavy rectangle 200 feet off Manhattan reached by two narrow bridges, replacing the remains of Pier 54 near West 14th Street, where the Lusitania used to dock.
The trust enlisted the media mogul Barry Diller, whose corporate headquarters are nearby, to cover most of the construction and operational costs; he brought in Heatherwick Studio (a London specialist in such projects) to design it. Though planned as a public park, the design also accommodated three outdoor event venues; it’s easy to imagine ticket-takers and other gate-keepers manning those bridges.
Extraordinary philanthropy, in our new Gilded Age, is extraordinarily praiseworthy. But with ever more private and corporate investment through Trusts and Friends and Foundations and Conservancies, it’s worth wondering what else seeps into public space — not the least of which seems to be a taste for order.