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The neighborhood’s history of barrel-making inspired the trash cans. Trakas carefully designed each element in the park. The path invites viewers to contemplate The Big Bang, physically engage with billions of years of geological history, and consider how humans contaminated Newtown Creek over the last four centuries.

Its benches and tables are etched with indigenous Lenape place names, blueprints for the ironclad Monitor and a rainwater-activated map of the creek’s original watershed. The grand staircase is actually a 36-ton granite sculpture, carved with scientific names to outline the Earth's evolution. This direct access to the water is more than all that’s available at Domino Park and Hunter’s Point South Park, combined.Įvery object and surface of the Newtown Creek Nature Walk is a component of a single large art piece. Around the corner, seven boat and kayak tie-offs are accessible via a dozen ladders ascending from Whale Creek.

The centerpiece of the first section is a 170-foot-wide grand staircase that leads visitors down into Newtown Creek. “This is a very small, very intimate space, relative to individuals walking it.”Īlong its quarter-mile of coastline, the path provides some of the most significant waterfront access of any public space on the East River. “They are much larger, and they are much more geared for a much larger public,” said Trakas.

Unlike newer waterfront parks nearby, including Hunter’s Point South Park and Domino Park, the Newtown Creek Nature Walk is not intended to offer much in the way of traditional amenities, such as ballfields and lawns. The entire pathway is a half-mile in length but encompasses less than two acres of land because much of its route consists of narrow walkways that hug the walls of the sewage plant. The nature walk can be simultaneously experienced as a linear park filled with native plants and as an enormous conceptual artwork, where dozens of sculptural elements sketch the stories of the creek and the cosmos. The vistas can be inspiring, even while filled with contamination. Here you can contemplate a curated collection of native plant species and simultaneously reflect on the ramifications of centuries of industrial pollution. Sculptures line the entire nature walk, guiding intrepid visitors through an adventurous public artwork that explores the histories of the creek and the universe. Newtown Creek is among the most polluted waterways in the United States, a federal Superfund site that has been fouled by sewage overflows, industrial toxins and an enormous underground oil spill. It is situated behind the Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant, the largest wastewater facility in New York City, a 53-acre complex that processes raw sewage from a million residents. The nature walk navigates a thin strip of shoreline between two toxic sites in Greenpoint. In late April, the gates opened at the second entrance of this unconventional green space, allowing visitors to traverse a hidden waterfront in north Brooklyn. After 23 years, the Newtown Creek Nature Walk is now complete.