Visualizing The Living Breakwaters at Conference House Park
On the first of June—one of those rare days invoked by the American poet James Russell Lowell—we met our advisor and Patagonia's long-time chief storyteller Vincent Stanley, and boarded the Staten Island Ferry for a visit to Tottenville. The village is the last stop on the Staten Island Rapid Transit line, at New York City's and New York State's southernmost tip. We were eager to see with our own eyes the planned site of the Living Breakwaters, a $60 million project funded by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development and a winner of HUD's Post-Sandy Rebuild by Design Challenge. Now in the conceptual design phase led by Scape/Landscape Architecture LLC, and implemented by the Governor’s Office of Storm Recovery, the breakwaters will be located off the coast of Tottenville along the shore of Conference House Park.
All photos by Nora Bouhaddada unless otherwise noted.
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Living Breakwaters is intended to be much more than a defense against the inevitable superstorms to come in the age of climate change. It is a project of ambitious regenerative proportions that holds promise for broad adaptation in other shoreline communities. Its aims are threefold and mutually reinforcing: to adapt the vulnerable south shore of Staten Island to withstand the worst ravages of likely future superstorms, to restore and enhance shoreline biodiversity, and to foster stewardship by reconnecting a community with its rich marine heritage.
Up until the turn of the 20th century Tottenville was known as "the town the oyster built," boasting a thriving oyster trade and shipbuilding industry. A combination of sewage pollution and toxic effluent from New Jersey industrial parks, overfishing, and disease put an end to it all. Tottenville's once thriving Main Street, like so many others across the country, fell victim in the second half of the century to malls, big box stores, and strip malls. Many of the architecturally significant homes were bulldozed to make way for new residential construction.
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Living Breakwaters is now catalyzing a lot of rethinking about what it means to rebuild in locales like Tottenville, where a thriving place-based economy was hobbled and natural systems degraded by the "march of progress." "How do we think about the next 50 years, not just the next year?” asks Lauren Elachi, of Scape/Landscape Architecture LLC, the lead design firm for Living Breakwaters. “It is interesting to pull people out of putting one foot in front of the other and to think imaginatively about how we strengthen our communities as part of these kinds of projects.”
We look forward to following the course of the Living Breakwaters project over the coming months as it draws the community into the design process. We will be exploring in parallel the larger story of how this challenged community may be inspired by Living Breakwaters to revive and reinvent itself for the 21st Century.
Our Tour of Conference House Park
John Kilcullen, director of the 267-acre Conference House Park, took us on a guided tour of its grounds and the proposed Living Breakwaters site. As we made our way along the winding paths, John, an arborist by training, and a former Senior Forester with the New York City Parks Department, pointed out the abundance of fauna and flora, including the Northern Hackberry tree, which thrives on the calcium-rich, shell-strewn soils near the shoreline, attracting a wide variety of bird species. We walked a trail along the little-known Lenape Indian burial ground (the largest in the city), and took in the shoreline vistas that make the site unique among the city's parks. John is overseeing a capital improvement program for the park that includes the preservation and (hopefully) restoration of its historic built structures and their adaptive re-use. He fervently hopes that The Living Breakwaters project will draw the residents of Tottenville into a more active engagement with the park that sits in their own backyard. He also envisions the project-related infrastructure investments will raise the park's visibility as a destination for residents citywide. “Sandy is making everyone rethink the waterfront," John explained. |
Above: John Kilcullen points out the proposed site of Living Breakwaters. The project will create a system of breakwaters constructed of recycled glass composite and concrete, seeded with the very same oysters that put Tottenville on the city’s culinary map over a century ago. As the oysters propagate, they are expected to strengthen the breakwaters and create conditions for new marine life to flourish.
A new Water Hub—still in the early planning stages—will create waterfront access for recreation, including kayaking and fishing, waterside dining, and ongoing environmental stewardship and education in collaboration with New York Harbor School and the city's Billion Oyster project.
The schematic design phase of Living Breakwaters is expected to be 30 percent complete by October of this year. If all goes as planned the design will be finalized by the fall of 2017 at which point construction will begin, and completed by the end of 2019.
A new Water Hub—still in the early planning stages—will create waterfront access for recreation, including kayaking and fishing, waterside dining, and ongoing environmental stewardship and education in collaboration with New York Harbor School and the city's Billion Oyster project.
The schematic design phase of Living Breakwaters is expected to be 30 percent complete by October of this year. If all goes as planned the design will be finalized by the fall of 2017 at which point construction will begin, and completed by the end of 2019.
Above: The Biddle House, circa 1845, was home to the operator of a ferryboat between Tottenville and Perth Amboy, New Jersey. Biddle also ran a resort on his grounds for Temperance Movement gatherings. The Greek Revival house is distinguished by its twin sloping rooflines and twin porticos. The house is in need of repair to restore it to its former glory.
Below: Located on the Conference House grounds, "The Beast," better known as a house centipede, by artist Scott LoBaido, will be repurposed as building construction material when it is dismantled.
Above: Vincent Stanley peers into the window of the Ward House, another historic structure on the Conference House Park grounds.
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Above: John helps us envision the possibilities for the Living Breakwaters including how the dunes might be placed to balance protection without compromising views of the shoreline.
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Below: The Conference House, built in 1680 by a British loyalist, was the site of an early, unsuccessful attempt in 1776 to put an end to the British American conflict at a meeting between British Lord Admiral Richard Howe and founding fathers John Adams, Edward Rutledge, and Benjamin Franklin. The Revolutionary War waged on for another 7 years.
The Living Breakwaters project was conceived from the outset as a layered approach to coastal resiliency, with plans for a protective dune system combined with the breakwater structures. Additional dune plantings like those pictured above will provide a habitat for marine life and also slow wave action. Another government sponsored program, NY Rising, is working alongside Living Breakwaters on this dune restoration project.
Below: Park benches, half buried in sand, blend naturally into the shoreline landscape.
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Bottom photo: Priceless view of the Manhattan Skyline on our return trip on the Staten Island Ferry. Actual cost of ferry ride: $0.00.