Grand Army Plaza is located at the northern entry point to Prospect Park in Brooklyn, bordered by the main Branch of the Brooklyn Library and the Brooklyn Museum. Currently it is dominated by traffic limiting its attraction as a place for people. This proposal for Grand Army Plaza envisions a return of the plaza as a pedestrian-centered civic space incorporating programmed and natural features.
To accomplish this, thru-traffic on Flatbush Avenue is sunken beneath the Plaza and local traffic diverted to the periphery of the plaza. A new subway station entrance is located at the once-isolated center of the Plaza. Existing earth-berms are incorporated into buildings to house new program elements, which are in short supply in the vicinity of the Plaza. Program elements include a café, a roller-blade rental shop, retail stores, squash courts, and a gallery with artifacts from the Brooklyn Museum. The tops of the new ‘berms’ will be vegetated and accessible, offering views and shady spaces for solitude and quiet. A thick layer of sod will provide insulation and thermal mass, reducing energy used to heat and cool the spaces below. The ‘berms’ will be discontinuous where streets terminate into the Plaza, to improve access into and visibility of the Plaza from the surrounding neighborhoods.
Inside Olmsted’s original elliptical plaza are a series of small ellipses of varying size, scattered across the entire Plaza. These ellipses will be focal points and activity nodes within the Plaza such as a dog run, tennis and bocce courts. Some ellipses will gather rainwater to replenish the fountain and flush toilets and others will be flower beds and community gardens. New open canopies with photovoltaic panels are proposed for the greenmarket.
Design Team: Clifton Fordham, Bill Craig, J.P. Donohue.