23 Years After Being Proposed, Greenpoint Nature Walk Is Finished

After 23 years, the Newtown Creek Nature Walk is now complete. In late April, the gates opened at the second entrance of this unconventional green space, allowing visitors to traverse a hidden waterfront in north Brooklyn.

The nature walk navigates a thin strip of shoreline between two toxic sites in Greenpoint. It is situated behind the Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant, the largest wastewater facility in New York City, a 53-acre complex that processes raw sewage from a million residents.

Newtown Creek is among the most polluted waterways in the United States, a federal Superfund site that has been fouled by sewage overflows, industrial toxins and an enormous underground oil spill.

Sculptures line the entire nature walk, guiding intrepid visitors through an adventurous public artwork that explores the histories of the creek and the universe. Here you can contemplate a curated collection of native plant species and simultaneously reflect on the ramifications of centuries of industrial pollution. The vistas can be inspiring, even while filled with contamination.

The Newtown Creek Nature Walk was created by artist George Trakas, a sculptor who has been rowing through these waters in a handmade boat since 1970. He proposed the project in 1998 as part of a $5 billion upgrade to the Department of Environmental Protection’s (DEP) wastewater plant. It was selected and funded by the Percent for Art Program, which requires a portion of the city’s construction budgets to be set aside for supporting public artworks.

The first phase opened in 2007, and the entire project was initially expected to be completed by 2014. Over the last 14 years, however, the effort faced numerous delays, leaving the walk to end abruptly, facing a concrete wall.

Trakas is now 77 years old and is delighted to finally see his vision complete. In a career that has spanned large-scale projects in Germany, Ireland and Italy, he says the nature walk is by far the biggest project on which he has ever worked.

“I’ve never taken 23 years to build something. But it was so much fun,” said Trakas, who was born in Canada and moved to New York in 1963, before going on to teach sculpture at Yale University for 13 years. “I came here with nothing and went to night school, and the city has fed me my whole life. So, it’s just nice to do something for the people of the city.”

For the past four years, Trakas has partnered with the Department of Design and Construction to complete the second and third phases of the nature walk, including traveling to local quarries to select materials. These new sections traverse over Whale Creek–an inlet on the Newtown Creek–and then through a landscape of fossils and bioswales, where rainwater is filtered into newly planted wetlands. Take a few more steps to find the new entrance near the treatment plant’s iconic digester eggs.

The nature walk can be simultaneously experienced as a linear park filled with native plants and as an enormous conceptual artwork, where dozens of sculptural elements sketch the stories of the creek and the cosmos. The entire pathway is a half-mile in length but encompasses less than two acres of land because much of its route consists of narrow walkways that hug the walls of the sewage plant.

Unlike newer waterfront parks nearby, including Hunter’s Point South Park and Domino Park, the Newtown Creek Nature Walk is not intended to offer much in the way of traditional amenities, such as ballfields and lawns. “They are much larger, and they are much more geared for a much larger public,” said Trakas. “This is a very small, very intimate space, relative to individuals walking it.”

Along its quarter-mile of coastline, the path provides some of the most significant waterfront access of any public space on the East River. The centerpiece of the first section is a 170-foot-wide grand staircase that leads visitors down into Newtown Creek. Around the corner, seven boat and kayak tie-offs are accessible via a dozen ladders ascending from Whale Creek. This direct access to the water is more than all that’s available at Domino Park and Hunter’s Point South Park, combined.

Every object and surface of the Newtown Creek Nature Walk is a component of a single large art piece. The grand staircase is actually a 36-ton granite sculpture, carved with scientific names to outline the Earth's evolution. Its benches and tables are etched with indigenous Lenape place names, blueprints for the ironclad Monitor and a rainwater-activated map of the creek’s original watershed. The path invites viewers to contemplate The Big Bang, physically engage with billions of years of geological history, and consider how humans contaminated Newtown Creek over the last four centuries.

Trakas carefully designed each element in the park. The neighborhood’s history of barrel-making inspired the trash cans. The rainwater swales reference medieval alleyways where residents would leave their night soil. All of this might sound like a didactic learning exercise couched in a toxic environment, but the nature walk is a playful, thought-provoking space that opens up a multitude of different perspectives into Newtown Creek.

The first phase of the nature walk focused on reintroducing native plants that once lived in the creek’s watershed and tracing out the story of human habitation along its banks. Its new portions take a more expansive view of the creek’s relationship to the surrounding area. The second section features a series of three boat-shaped vessels traveling above Whale Creek, inscribed with words that explore the evolution of the cosmos, science and human civilization. In its third section, visitors can walk on 400-million-year-old brachiopod fossils, sit on 385-million-year-old fossilized tree stumps from one of the Earth’s oldest known forests and drink water from a fountain carved out of a 3.5 billion-year-old rock. A dozen glass-topped cylinders are scattered among the new wetlands planted here, etched with the names of navigational stars.

These areas have been open for three weeks, and local residents have already embraced them. On a recent weekday, a steady stream of bicyclists, joggers, baby strollers and dog walkers crossed the new bridges and bioswales.

“As soon as this entrance opened up, my life improved 15 percent,” said Alexander Shaw, an artist who lives and works near the sewage plant. “I am definitely a hardcore proponent of this park. Normally, I’d have to take a real dusty street to get to Manhattan Avenue. And now I can just sneak around and get to see the beautiful wildlife and greenery and all the skimming boats.”

The newest sections are the first of several green spaces that may soon open along this body of water. In an empty lot nearby, the Newtown Creek Alliance is working with the DEP to create the Gateway to Greenpoint, another green space adjacent to the sewage plant. Several blocks to the south, work is now complete on Under the K, a new park beneath the Kosciuszko Bridge that is expected to open soon.

All of these spaces represent years of effort by the community to create a healthier relationship with Newtown Creek.

“There is so much history here, and so much of that history is unfortunately wrapped up in complete abuse of the natural environment and poisoning of the local community as well,” said Willis Elkins, the executive director of the Newtown Creek Alliance, who has brought hundreds of students to visit the Trakas’ artwork. “The nature walk has fundamentally changed the story of the creek and community involvement... It is creating a whole new connection along the waterfront.”

The completed Newtown Creek Nature Walk is now open from dawn to dusk, and an official ribbon-cutting ceremony will take place in the coming weeks.

“The DEP does not have any public parks. They are pretty much into either taking care of wastewater or delivering potable water. So they are very excited about this opening,” said Trakas. “They don’t have anything else like this. This is kind of unique.”