Tucked between a Costco and a rusty-gated warehouse guarded by barking dogs on the far Western Side of Astoria, bordering the East River, is Socrates Sculpture Park. Sometimes the grass is wearing a bit thin. There’s often a feeling that things are in flux, as the rotating exhibit of sculptures changes. On one visit you might find a captivating cement tree embedded with rescued ceramics (an owl here, a cat there, a fish, a human face, pastel flowers), the next a dirty mound marking the spot where it stood, and the next, grass over that mound making it a perfect perch for picnickers and sprawled sunbathers.
The feeling of things in flux is part of the park’s magic though. That, and the contrasting presence of the river, which despite its restless flow and fluctuating light speaks of permanence. It’s the same river after all that was navigated by the Rockaway Indians in their canoes, and the same river where they ominously reported sighting “white winged canoes” in the late 1400s and early 1500s when on various occasions the British and Dutch eventual settlers made their first sail-bys in search of a northwesterly route to the East.
It’s the same river where the Hussar frigate sank, supposedly containing a chest full of coins that was never recovered. It’s the same river where on June 15, 1904 the General Slocum excursion boat caught fire. Over a thousand passengers died, mainly women and children, who were on an outing from St Mark’s Lutheran Church on the Lower East Side – it was New York City’s worst disaster before the 9/11 attacks. It’s the same river where there are new efforts afoot to encourage recreational canoeing, and where the East River ferry recently re-launched, making quick hops downstream: 34th Street in Manhattan - Long Island City - Williamsburg - DUMBO - Wall Street - Governors’ Island and back again.
One of the current exhibits in the Sculpture Park reflects the area’s past and present and casts an eye to the future. Thin red and white striped vertical poles mark a route from one of the park’s entrances on Vernon Boulevard, to the river. Their colors echo the red and white striped chimneys of "Big Alice" power station a little downstream, while the path they follow marks that taken by Sunswick Creek. The creek used to wind its way from what is now 37th Avenue and 21st Street to its East River mouth. As an 1896 history of Long Island City describes, when the East River first formed after Long Island Sound burst opened up to the sea, the river's “Western shore became scenes of salt marshes, lagoons and creeks…Beaver, deer and other fur and food producing animals roamed the forests, while the streams abounded with fish and other food products of the sea.”
Over time the creek became surrounded with agricultural land, then industry, and was then buried entirely by an illegal dumping ground which in 1986 artists, led by the sculptor Mark di Suvero, claimed to create the Socrates Sculpture Park. The exhibit also works inland to the former creek’s source, using red and white stripes painted onto lamposts. It is the artist Mary Miss’ contribution to a project called “Civic Action: A Vision for Long Island City” in which the Sculpture Park and nearby Noguchi Museum are exploring ideas for what this waterfront area could become.
Artists who take up in previously derelict areas are often gentrification canaries. A pattern kicks in, in which before long they help make an area desirable, which pushes prices up and them out. Socrates Sculpture Park looks stunning at the moment. It’s a hive of activity and excitement. Yet I can’t help being wary of a future High-Line effect (while hopeful it can be avoided). Recently, walking down the High Line on the Western edge of Manhattan, a disused elevated railway line that has been converted into a long thin park, I was struck by how corporatized it feels.
The High Line is still fun to visit, with its quirky-angled views Chelsea buildings and streets and the occasional glimpse of a fragment of the Hudson, but new luxury apartment buildings already loom over it and are beginning to dominate. Most are still freshly-clad in billboards advertising their location “on”, “by” or “over the High Line”. The songs of birds pecking at feed-boxes on an exhibit designed to attract them are drowned out not only by tourists’ cameras photographing them but more loudly by the banging and clanging of adjacent construction sites. Squished between the new buildings are stifled attempts by arty types to say “hey don’t forget us”: a naked mannequin posing in a window here, some space-claiming graffiti there.
In an earlier post on a “Queens Kind of Cool” I hoped that Queens retains three defining traits as it evolves: diversity, entrepreneurialism and openness. The same goes for changes along Queens’ border with the East River. Hopefully the park and its surrounding areas will also keep elements of messy flux and marshiness. Hopefully they will always be a place where the river brings a whiff of the past and the land can render surprise.
This pic was taken back in April. When I went to the park the other day the grass was much thicker, the sun shining, and the Sunswick Creek exhibit complete - here it's still in the making.
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