The Upper Room came tumbling down.<\/p>\n
A beloved public art project in Battery Park City was demolished Thursday<\/a>\u00a0<\/a>to make way for a new stormproof seawall \u2014 leaving local park advocates mourning its loss and saying they believed it didn\u2019t need to get washed away.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are a lot of people questioning why the art piece had to be destroyed,\u201d said John Dellaportas, the Vice President of The Battery Alliance.<\/p>\n Upper Room was reduced to rubble this week after sitting on the Esplanade for nearly 40 years. William Farrington<\/p>\n \u201cHow they connect climate change to destroying a piece of public art on really high ground is beyond me.\u201d<\/p>\n The 20-columned sculpture called the Upper Room had stood at the Esplanade entrance at Albany Street for nearly 40 years before it was reduced to rubble Thursday.<\/p>\n Crews took jackhammers, saws and backhoes to the Upper Room, destroying in just two days the sculpture that had served as a neighborhood gathering place for nearly 40 years.<\/p>\n It was the first public art piece commissioned by the Battery Park City Authority, which appraised the stunning piece at $1.5 million.<\/p>\n The authority says it had no choice but to destroy the beloved Upper Room as it prepares to break ground on its controversial North\/West Battery Park City Resiliency<\/a>\u00a0(NWBPCR) project.<\/p>\n Artist Ned Smyth created the artwork in 1986. Luiz C. Ribeiro for New York Post<\/p>\n Its longtime home sits atop a space the authority is eyeing to construct a large tide gate that would mitigate future flooding in the event of the next Superstorm Sandy.<\/p>\n Plus, the sculpture had shown signs of cracking in recent years and would have been difficult to relocate because the columns are filled with rebar<\/p>\n But one art conservator theorized the BPCA could have saved the neighborhood staple, but was just too cheap to try.<\/p>\n The piece sat atop where the BPCA plans to establish a tidal gate. Luiz C. Ribeiro for New York Post<\/p>\n