Brooklyn Bridge Park

You are walking toward a landscape built entirely on the ghosts of a defunct shipping empire. Where you now see expansive lawns and winding pathways, the waterfront once served as one of the busiest cargo terminals in the world. As recently as the nineteen seventies, this entire stretch was a landscape of abandoned pier sheds and concrete, left to decay after the shipping industry shifted its operations elsewhere. When local activists began campaigning in the nineteen eighties, they fought a plan that would have turned this entire waterfront into high-rise office and residential towers. They eventually secured the space for public use, leading to the transformation of these industrial remnants into the eighty-five-acre park you see today.