“Can’t we just go to a normal park?” evahagberg reviews the new Pier 57 roof park above Google's latest campus
Pier 57’s rooftop park. Photo: Brett Beyer It took me a minute — or more like 15 — to find the new Google park. It’s technically called the rooftop park at Pier 57, and it’s the city’s newest public park, though because of its location , its financing , its relative inaccessibility, and, as I discovered once I finally found it, the number of built-up elements, it feels like one of New York City’s least public parks.
Normally it takes me enormous effort to leave the house; I just like being home. But during the pandemic, when parks were among the few places it felt safe to gather, I became attached to a number of them. I spent hours of the early pandemic with my then-new boyfriend at Herbert von King Park in Bed-Stuy, where the energy feels relaxed and the fashion-oriented people-watching was enough to occupy us during the seemingly endless pre-vaxx summer hours.
Pier 57, seen from the Hudson. Photo: Brett Beyer Trying to locate the park, I crossed Tenth Avenue and saw Little Island to my left. I thought about how I’d dismissed it early on — it felt like yet another one of Thomas Heatherwick’s one-note follies, like the Vessel at Hudson Yards, but less thought through. Its bulbous concrete supports reminded me of towers of Champagne glasses or an overdetermined cake, a showy design that seems to demonstrate form for form’s sake.