Transformative Work on Lincoln Center’s Western Edge Featured in The New York Times, New York Magazine

Hernández covers the project announcement, detailing the $335 million transformation—a collaboration between design architect WEISS/MANFREDI, landscape architect Walter Hood, and architect of record Moody Nolan—and its plan to expand the park’s programming and accessibility, most prominently by removing the forbidding wall along Amsterdam Avenue to make way for expanded gardens, greenspace, a fountain, and a 2,000-seat outdoor performance venue with trellised bleachers.

Davidson and Kimmelman expand on the urban necessity of this transformation with a survey of the project’s backstory as well as the city’s many ambitious new civic and cultural projects. “Compared to a generation ago, New York is greener, cooler, and fresher,” writes Davidson, “Strips of plantings, seating, and pedestrian-coded paving now line dozens of miles of waterfront, civilize boulevards, reclaim piers, and give neighborhoods a focal point.”

Elaborating on Damrosch Park’s architectural and sociological history, the notorious dissolution of San Juan Hill through Robert Moses’ urban renewal campaign, Kimmelman describes the intent behind the makeover as aiming to “heal a civic wound” by dissolving boundaries—both literal and figurative—between the neighborhood and Lincoln Center Plaza.

“Despite all the brick, stone and concrete, cities are fluid,” Kimmelman writes. “A wall cleaves a neighborhood and a community, but it can come down. Change begins with a deceptively simple question: Why is that wall (or parking lot or empty storefront or highway, you name it) there in the first place?”

Read Javier C. Hernández’ and Michael Kimmelman’s articles in The New York Times and Justin Davidson’s in New York Magazine.