{"id":353195,"date":"2025-12-17T02:00:20","date_gmt":"2025-12-17T02:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/353195\/"},"modified":"2025-12-17T02:00:20","modified_gmt":"2025-12-17T02:00:20","slug":"a-plaza-by-i-m-pei-and-m-paul-friedberg-in-brooklyn-will-be-reconstructed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/353195\/","title":{"rendered":"A plaza by I. M. Pei and M. Paul Friedberg in Brooklyn will be reconstructed"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Brutalist<\/a> public plaza completed in 1969 by I. M Pei<\/a> and M. Paul Friedberg<\/a> in Crown Heights, Brooklyn<\/a>, will be reconstructed<\/a> by the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation (NYC Parks<\/a>). The project entails replacing \u201cfencing, walls, and pavers<\/a>\u201d the Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC<\/a>) said today, December 16, in a hearing. LPC approved the proposal this morning in a 7-to-1 vote.<\/p>\n

The historic site is located on St. Mark\u2019s Avenue between Kingston and Albany Avenues. It is closed off to traffic, but not resident parking\u2014diagonal rows of cars edge the mid-block park on both sides. Pei was the urban designer and Friedberg conceived the play equipment. Many of the original features were lost over time.<\/p>\n

NYC Parks says the renovation is essential for increasing children\u2019s amenities, better integrating the park into the streetscape, enhancing sight lines, and improving public safety. (Motorists often drive on the mid-block plaza, endangering children<\/a>.) Michael Gotkin, a New York\u2013based landscape architect and historian, has been advocating to preserve the park\u2019s Brutalist integrity while adhering to public safety concerns.<\/p>\n

\"\"St. Mark\u2019s Playground circa 1970s (Courtesy Gil Amiaga\/NYC Parks)<\/p>\n

Gotkin characterized the original design as \u201ca Brutalist landscape very much of its time: sharply geometric, mostly rectilinear with contrasting regular geometric circles, exposed concrete tempered by warm brown asphalt and brick pavers, simple \u2018lollipop\u2019 globe pedestrian-scale lights, seating incorporated fully into the design, and a fountain centerpiece that was a harmony of circles within a square.\u201d<\/p>\n

The new proposal by NYC Parks \u201cshows a variety of pavements and furnishings from their standard catalog, resulting in a hodge-podge of styles and materials within the remaining bones of the Pei design,\u201d Gotkin told AN before adding that\u00a0the park \u201ccan and should be restored to be more sympathetic to its original details and to the historic design of the superblock in which it exists.\u201d<\/p>\n

A Super History<\/p>\n

Pei Cobb Freed & Partners completed a master plan for the Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation (BSRC) in the 1960s\u2014envisioning two pilot \u201csuperblocks\u201d on St. Mark\u2019s Avenue and Prospect Place with widened sidewalks, narrower roads, and new street furniture, playgrounds, and tree-lined pedestrian spaces.<\/p>\n

Gotkin noted that the St. Mark\u2019s superblock can be understood as a \u201ccorrective\u201d to Pei\u2019s Society Hill Towers<\/a> in Philadelphia where the \u201cphysical design was highly praised, but the programmatic removal of the original neighborhood residents was widely loathed,\u201d marred by the \u201cforcible removal\u201d of Black families to make way for the urban renewal project.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe same Brutalist design elements that Pei had used to great acclaim at Society Hill were transposed to the Brooklyn superblock, featuring geometric wood and concrete seating, walls, planters, and fountains and also brick paving that collectively became the hallmarks of Pei\u2019s urban interventions,\u201d Gotkin said.<\/p>\n

\"\"The play equipment was designed by M. Paul Friedberg, who died earlier this year. (Courtesy Gil Amiaga\/NYC Parks)<\/p>\n

New York Senator Robert F. Kennedy tasked the BSRC with preparing a revitalization plan for Bedford-Stuyvesant and Crown Heights in 1966. That year, Kennedy described the combined neighborhoods as \u201c653 blocks, stretching over nine miles [\u2026] crammed with 450,000 people\u201d with abnormal infant mortality, delinquency, dropout, unemployment, and poverty rates.<\/p>\n

Plans by Pei and Friedberg were rolled out in 1967 and St. Mark\u2019s Playground opened in 1969. Ethel Kennedy attended the ribbon cutting after her husband\u2019s assassination in 1968, as did then-New York City Mayor John Lindsay, and Senators Jacob Javits and Charles Goodell, as reported by The New Yorker in an article aptly titled, \u201cSuper Block<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis day belongs to someone who is not here,\u201d Lindsay said at the opening. \u201cThis is Robert Kennedy\u2019s day. It was his energy that brought together men from the community and from the city to build a new Bedford-Stuyvesant.\u201d<\/p>\n

A \u201csuperblock youth patrol\u201d staffed by local teenagers was assembled to assist with public safety, and make sure that motorists follow the area\u2019s parking rules. Square benches were speckled in the sunken plaza that was to be flooded with water in the hot months, stemming from a bespoke fountain. It used the same benches as the 1964 New York World\u2019s Fair in Queens.<\/p>\n

\"\"The master plan by Pei conceived other superblocks spread throughout Bedford-Stuyvesant and Crown Heights, but those were never realized. (Courtesy NYC Parks)<\/p>\n

Inspired by Jane Jacobs, the masterplan called for more superblocks all throughout Bedford-Stuyvesant and Crown Heights (Kennedy wanted to build them in cities throughout the country) but those never came to fruition.<\/p>\n

The St. Mark\u2019s superblock was renovated by NYC Parks in 2002. The redesign removed the original fountain, and several trees. The semi-circular concrete catch basin for fountain runoff was removed and replaced with steps. Gotkin called the redesign \u201cill-conceived\u201d and said it \u201cdamaged but did not destroy the integrity of the original superblock.\u201d<\/p>\n

Today, Pei\u2019s Crown Heights superblocks are much lesser known in comparison to his other New York City projects like the Silver Towers in Greenwich Village, which also employed a superblock concept. NYC Parks officials presented a renovation plan for St. Mark\u2019s Playground in summer 2025 and estimate the proposed reconstruction project will cost $2.8 million.<\/p>\n

\"\"Site plans of the playground and public plaza, from 1969 to today. (Courtesy NYC Parks)<\/p>\n

Revised plans show the return of some existing features from the 1969 version, like the semi-circular concrete form. Playground cubes would be changed to red, as per the original design. Gotkin, however, believes NYC Parks can do better.<\/p>\n

\u201cPei\u2019s original Brutalist site furnishings, custom designed but easy to produce, should be restored rather than the disparate, off the shelf furnishings that Parks is proposing,\u201d Gotkin said, in his critique of the NYC Parks proposal. \u201cThe spirit and integrity of Friedberg\u2019s original integrated geometric play equipment can be reinterpreted while being upgraded for current safety standards.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Brutalist public plaza completed in 1969 by I. M Pei and M. Paul Friedberg in Crown Heights,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":353196,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[228,226,227,229,88],"class_list":{"0":"post-353195","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-design","12":"tag-entertainment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=353195"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353195\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/353196"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=353195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=353195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=353195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}