John Street Park

John Street Park stands on land that once served a very different purpose. Before it became a quiet place for views of the Manhattan skyline, this site was a industrial brownfield used for decades as a dumping ground. It gained a reputation for frequent fires and contamination during the neighborhood's manufacturing era. Local residents spent years fighting for this specific waterfront stretch to be reclaimed and cleaned, eventually successfully negotiating its addition into the Brooklyn Bridge Park footprint as a way to replace the neglected, hazardous site with public green space.