Snail mail not slowed by the snowstorm

The "sixth largest snowstorm in New York City" on record did not snow-in mail boxes or the postman.

Image: New York Post Office, New York, 1960s (source)

This figures; the following excerpt from a Herodotus work is inscribed on the city's main post office, the historic James Farley Post Office:

Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.

Image: Farley Post Office green roof

We profiled the Farley Post Office's green roof, the largest in New York City at 2.5 acres, which provides passive recreation and environmental services such as reductions in summer and winter runoff and savings in heating and cooling costs.

Then (November) & Now (post-December blizzard)

The plaza outside New York University's Coles Gym on Mercer Street in November 2010 and on December 28, 2010 after the "sixth largest snowstorm in New York City [recorded] History" according to New York magazine via the Daily News and the New York Times.

Did you have post-Christmas precipitation in your area? What type and how much? Links to photographs can be included in the comment section, too.

Green-roofed bird houses

Image: Bluebird House by Sustainable Pet Design (courtesy of Stephanie Rubin)

Sustainable Pet Design ships unplanted, waterproofed bird (and dog) houses "with drainage material, filter fabric, and [their] special soil mix." Planted houses can be shipped to California addresses. The company can provide native plant sources to their customers. Each house is constructed of untreated red cedar planks, zero-VOC paint, and beeswax waterproofing.

Image: Chiclet Birdhouse by Sustainable Pet Design (courtesy of Stephanie Rubin)

These bird houses might be good gifts for folks who live in the Central Park neighborhood or in Los Angeles County and other areas of Southern California. Why? See the numbers below.

On Sunday, December 19, 2010, the 111th Christmas Bird Count in Central Park recorded 59 species of birds and 6,220 individual birds reported the NYC Parks Daily Plant blog.

Also, on Sunday, December 19, "six locations in L.A. County set new record rainfall totals"  reported the L.A. Times. The locations were Pasadena (3.45 inches vs. the record 1.5 inches in 1987); San Gabriel (3.2 inches fell vs. the record of 1.9 inches in 1970); UCLA (2.87 inches vs. the record of 2.82 inches in 1949); Downtown Los Angeles (2.3 inches vs. the record of 2.12 inches in 1921); LAX (1.63 inches vs. the record of 1.62 inches in 1984); and Long Beach (1.5 inches vs. the record of .52 inches in 1984).

To the birders and wildlife habitat designers who read this blog, to which species of birds are the Chiclet Birdhouse and Bluebird Home best suited?

Hat tip: Sunset's Fresh Dirt gift guide blog post.

Playing in traffic in Washington Square Park

Image: Washington Square Park (Memorial Arch) by Percy Loomis Sperr, 1925 (source)

We count Washington Square Park as one of our neighborhood parks.  Imagine my surprise when I read that cars once ran through the park via Fifth Avenue!  On the "closing streets and roads" to gain parkland in Urban Green: Innovative Parks for Resurgent Cities, Peter Harnik wrote that the park

had been bisected by Fifth Avenue until 1964.  Ironically, a proposal to expand that avenue into a freeway led to the uproar that made the park entirely car-free--and a much more successful space (2010, 143).

Road closure in the park resulted in a gain of one and a half acres of parkland according to Anthony Flint in Wrestling with Moses: How Jane Jacobs Took On New York's Master Builder and Transformed the American City.  Flint placed the closure of Fifth Avenue at "a few weeks before the assassination of John F. Kennedy in November 1963."

Image: Park entrance at Waverly Place and Fifth Avenue, under construction (source)

The NYC Parks website recounts the freeway proposal this way:

In February 1952, Mrs. Shirley Hayes, a young mother of four sons (Dennis, Timothy, Christopher, Kerry) living in Greenwich Village, discovered the city’s plans to link Fifth Avenue, which at the time ran through the park, with West Broadway in an attempt to alleviate downtown traffic congestion. The measure, approved by the City Planning Board and then Parks Commissioner Robert Moses, would have removed the park’s fountain and allowed cars and buses to cut right through the heart of the park.

 

Before Fifth Avenue was closed at Waverly Place, the park's fountain was not centered on Memorial Arch and traffic curved around the fountain.  The relocation of the fountain was part of the first phase of the Washington Square Park reconstruction project which began in December 2007 and completed in May 2009.

For more photographs of vehicles being driven in the park, view the gallery at New York Architecture's website.

Stewarding the High Line photo illustrates an eco-city article in Die Gazette 28

Image: Captioned "Pflege des High-Line-Parks durch lokale Organisationen" in Die Gazette 28 (p. 55).  The original photograph can be viewed here.

Our photograph of a High Line staff person watering the Washington Grasslands was included in "Das nackte und - das Gute Leben" (The naked and - the Good Life) by Von Rainer Schmitz and Johanna Söhnigen published in Die Gazette's Winter 2010/2011 issue.  (Thank you Dr. Fritz R. Glunk.)  Schmitz and Söhnigen considered "different visions of the eco-city of the future."  Images of the High Line Park, Buckminster Fuller's Dome over Manhattan, 1960, among others accompanied the article.

Image: Cover of Die Gazette 28

The High Line has been the subject of six posts.  Have you read all six?  You can, now!

Autumn color on the High Line

Opening day for Imagination Playground

Every drop counts at the High Line

Stewarding High Line Park

Time on the High Line

Manhattan's parks as green infrastructure

American sweetgums removed from the landscape design of the 9/11 Memorial Plaza

Image: Row of sweetgums in early fall, Berkeley, California

In November 2006, New York Times reporter David W. Dunlap wrote about the selection of and caring for the sweetgums and oaks to populate the completed 9/11 Memorial Plaza.  A 9/11 Memorial document from 2009 advertising holiday ornaments described the inspiration for choosing the sweetgum and the swamp white oak for the memorial's landscape.

In the fall, the lustrous green and white colored leaves of the Swamp White Oak trees, Quercus Bicolor, will change to colors ranging from amber to golden brown, and sometimes pink and will serve as graceful and hopeful symbols of life and longevity.

The Sweet Gum trees, Liquidambar styraciflua, will ring the Memorial glade, a clearing within the grove for gatherings and ceremonies. Sweet Gum trees have star-shaped, glossy leaves that turn brilliant colors of red and gold around the time of the 9/11 anniversary. By reminding us of the natural cycle of life, the Memorial trees will convey a spirit of hope and renewal.

The 39 American sweetgums grown for the plaza were eliminated from the landscape design by Peter Walker and Partners. The decision was spearheaded by the memorial's original architect Michael Arad according to the Times reporter Dunlap.  The sweetgums lost their place around the perimeter of the plaza because they were perceived as a distraction from the central elements of the plaza, the twin voids.  Arad, in an interview with the Times, said,

“I felt the design — reduced to its most essential elements — was the twin voids. I really didn’t want to have anything that would distract from the clarity of that. I think a consensus emerged that the ring of sweet gums, at some level, obscured the clarity of that gesture.”

The plaza will be planted exclusively with swamp white oaks (which we wrote about here).  A monoculture of 415 swamp white oaks!  Remember Dutch elm disease?  And New York City is currently dealing with the Asian Long Horned Beetle.  However, the swamp white oak has no "serious" issues with pests, fungi, cankers, or wilts according to a USDA fact sheet though the same document does express concern about "oak decline" and "anthracnose may sometimes be a problem."

One of our readers commented on Dunlap's article and we've included it below (thank you Helaine for allowing us to reprint your editorial here).

Landscape architect Peter Walker had it right.

Fall color is more than seasonal beauty: its poignancy can elicit unbidden emotion––visual ecstasy followed by an acute awareness of loss. The swath of scarlet sweet gum in September would have jarred the geometry with a bolt of intense feeling, which after all is what the memorial is meant to evoke and sustain.

Landscape architecture is the art best equipped to mark the passage of time, to manifest change, and is practically responsible to do so. The flash of sweet gum would invite a closer look at the site in autumn, and annual remembrance.
Design decisions that shape important public space are indeed newsworthy, and landscape architects like Walker are the poets of such space. The political interference sounds like a turf-war at the project’s expense.
___________________________
Helaine Kaplan Prentice, ASLA
Center for Community Innovation
University of California, Berkeley

Would you have liked to see sweetgums at the 9/11 memorial site?

Uptown Normal's blue-green roundabout

The term "blue-green" is taken from the Blue-Green Building website maintained by Friends of Five Creeks in Berkeley, California.  We have used the term to describe a traffic circle in Uptown Normal, Illinois because the circle collects and filters stormwater (blue) and features a park and uses plants to filter runoff (green).  All plan images were created by Hoerr Schaudt courtesy of Hoerr Schaudt Landscape Architects with the exception of the Uptown Circle rendering and the Potsdam Gate plan image.

Uptown Normal's blue-green roundabout was designed by Hoerr Schaudt of Hoerr Schaudt Landscape Architects. The traffic circle is a sustainability feature of the Uptown Plan, a redevelopment plan initiated by the Town Council of Normal in 1999.  The circle "connects Beaufort Street, North Street, Constitution Boulevard" and "replaced a formerly awkward intersection at that location."

A roundabout design was selected for three reasons. One, Federal Highway Administration research showed that traffic circles reduce fatalities, injury accidents, and pedestrian and vehicular conflicts. Two, traffic flow is more efficient through a circular system. And three, less idle time means less air pollution.

There are several innovative elements of the Uptown Normal Circle.  Designer Hoerr Schaudt reused an abandoned storm sewer, converting this infrastructure into a "detention cistern" with a 76,000-gallon holding capacity.  The collected stormwater is treated with ultraviolet light and filtered in the "bog" on either side of the circle.  Cleaned and filtered water is used in the fountain.  Collected stormwater is also used to irrigate the neighborhood's streetscape.

Image: Uptown Circle rendering by Scott Shigley courtesy of Hoerr Schaudt Landscape Architects

A second innovative feature of the Circle is the incorporation of a park. Hoerr Schaudt refers to this central space as the "town green,"

a dynamic space as cars and water move around its users. The natural sounds of the flowing water help to mitigate the sounds of ongoing traffic. This intimate “round” park symbolizes the town of Normal’s commitment to environmental awareness. In addition, it serves as a gateway and icon while providing a place for visitors and commuters to wait for the train, have lunch, go to a market or see a performance.

Third, the Uptown Circle is the "first U.S. project to design an underground structural cell system for a streetscape." The structural cell system might be Deep Root's Silva Cell which is "a frame and a deck" system that provides large volumes for soil and thus root growth as well as for runoff treatment, space for utilities, and load bearing capacity for sidewalks.

Image: Potsdam Gate 1866 by Carl Friedrich Schinkel (source)

Finally, I asked the landscape architecture firm about the design inspiration and received this answer via email (thank you Peter Schaudt and Alison Strickler).

Herbert Dreiseitl’s design for Potsdamer Platz in Berlin was a big inspiration for this project.  Dreiseitl’s use of water in his work often has both symbolic and ecological meaning.  Potsdamer Platz uses rainwater collected in underground tanks to feed a complex water system that is enjoyed by the public.  He has a wonderful book called Waterscapes, Planning, Building and Designing with Water.  Some excerpts on Potsdamer Platz from the book are here: http://web.mit.edu/fmr/www/11.308/project_cases_platz.html.

And the EPA Smart Growth Achievement award goes to...

...San Francisco's Mint Plaza by CMG Landscape Architects and Sherwood Design Engineers.  Thanks to a posting on Infrastructurist we learned that one of our favorite small, open spaces in San Francisco has won the EPA Smart Growth Achievement award in the Civic Places category.  We wrote about  the stormwater management elements of the plaza here.

The EPA created the National Award for Smart Growth Achievement "in 2002 to recognize exceptional approaches to development that respect the environment, foster economic vitality, and enhance quality of life."  Mint Plaza received the award in its category because

As many municipalities struggle with limited resources to improve and maintain the public realm, a local developer, working with the city and county of San Francisco, successfully transformed Jessie Street, a neglected city-owned alleyway, into Mint Plaza, a neighborhood public space.

Since its completion in 2008, Mint Plaza has become a model of adaptive public space design and a successful example of converting an automobile-focused and previously unsafe alleyway into pedestrian-only civic space. As a result, Mint Plaza now supports various public gatherings–from a weekly farmers’ market to a seasonal “People in Plazas” event with free music and dance performances–and enhances the neighborhood’s public image.

The winners in other categories are:

Overall Excellence
Smart.Growth@NYC: Policies and Programs for Improving Livability in New York City
New York, New York
New York City Department of Transportation with the Departments of Health, Design and Construction, and City Planning

Smart Growth and Green Building
Miller’s Court
Baltimore, Maryland
Baltimore City Department of Housing and Community Development, Seawall Development Company, Hamel Builders, and Marks, Thomas Architects

Programs, Policies, and Regulations
Making the Greatest Place: Metro’s Strategic Implementation of the 2040 Growth Concept
Portland, Oregon
Metro

Rural Smart Growth
Gateway 1 Corridor Action Plan
Maine
Gateway 1 Communities and Maine Department of Transportation

Finding Park Space in the City

Note: the title of this post was taken from a chapter in Urban Green: Innovative Parks for Resurgent Cities by Peter Harnik.

Since we ran Aaron Odland's essay about the wildlife habitat potential of urban cemeteries and our own observations of the New Bowery or Second Cemetery of the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue, we have read several articles about the trend of urban cemeteries being used as parks.

Most recently, Peter Harnik and Aric Merolli contributed "Cemeteries Alive" to Landscape Architecture magazine (December 2010).  In the article, Harnik and Merolli noted that cemeteries were often cities "primary green spaces."  Consider Mt. Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, MA and Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn, NY.  The authors provided case studies of 11 "selected urban cemeteries that function like parks" including Cedar Hill in Hartford, CT, Grand View Cemetery in Fort Collins, CO, Oakland Cemetery in Atlanta, GA, and Evergreen Cemetery in Portland, ME.

In an excerpt from Urban Green: Innovative Parks for Resurgent Cities (Harnik, 2010) for City Parks Blog, Harnik wrote that the level of recreation permitted in a cemetery defines a cemetery as a park. What is considered recreation? Harnik's list included

walk,
walk a dog,
cycle,
picnic,
play music,
throw a ball,
sit under a tree.

On a related note, Yalin Fu and Ihsuan Lin have designed Mumbai's Moksha Towers, a vertical cemetery to be wrapped in a "multi-layered skin consisting of an outer skin, glazing, plants, woven material and a steel frame would line the tower, absorbing heat and CO2," according to a review on inhabitat.

Do you recreate in a local cemetery?

Tree care tools

Each student in the Trees New York Citizen Pruner course received a manual.  One of my favorite illustrations in the manual is Figure 3.2 - Tree Care Tools, shown below. 

I have a few pairs of Felco hand pruners from my time as a community forester in New Haven.  (Also, I own a few dbh* tapes from my time as an urban forester in Boston.)  Tools on my wish list: a wire cutter/sheet metal snip, a lopping shear, a folding saw, and a pole pruner.

Image: Tree Care Tools, Figure 3.2 in Trees New York Citizen Pruner Manual

* dbh =  trunk diameter at breast height measured at 4 1/2 feet above the ground.

Fire hydrant marker

Have you ever seen a fire hydrant marker on the road?  I observed several in Hackensack, NJ on a recent trip there.  The markers are reflective, aiding fire department personnel to locate hydrants in low light conditions.  However, the markers are inconsequential if the road is snow covered.  The Hackensack Fire Department's "Adopt a Hydrant" program allows adopters to clear hydrants of snow in the winter and vegetation in the summer.  Other New Jersey cities, like Oradell, install reflective pole markers to assist fire fighters in locating hydrants in inclement weather.

Image: Fire Hydrant Marking Device invented by Floyd L. Reardon (screen capture) (source)

Vertical fire hydrant marking devices have been patented.  Floyd L. Reardon's Fire Hydrant Marking Device on July 17, 1962 and Kenneth D. Shrefler's Marking Device For A Fire Hydrant Or The Like on October 23, 1984.

Image: Drinking water sampling station, Bedford Street

Hydrant markers are one of numerous municipal infrastructure that are hidden in plain sight like New York City's drinking water sampling stations.  Next time: fire alarm boxes.