Considering Promenade Hill
Amanda Purcell has an article today on HudsonValley360 with a headline that is enough to make one's blood run cold: "Hudson to reimagine Promenade Hill Park." The use of the term reimagine calls to mind the disturbing exercise in "rethinking" the Public Square (a.k.a. Seventh Street Park) that took place back in 2014. By all means, let us "reimagine" the 1970s maze of retaining walls and asphalt that is the entrance to Promenade Hill, but let the reimagining stop at the promenade itself.
The RFQ (request of qualifications) issued by the City for Promenade Hill, which is the subject of Purcell's article, states: "The City is looking for an inspired park design to renovate and refurbish the park that will honor the historic features and create a memorable park experience for visitors of all abilities." Although that doesn't exactly say "reimagine," I, for one, wish that the word preserve had been used instead of honor.
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| Painting by Henry Ary |
There is one bit of information in the article that needs correction and elaboration. The article states: "In 2016, Restaino Design PC Landscape Architecture was hired by the city to present accessibility improvement options. . . ." Landscape architect Barbara Restaino was hired not by the City but by Hudson Development Corporation, and the money used to pay her fee--nearly $7,000--was provided by the Mrs. Greenthumbs Hedge Fund, which has since morphed into the Hudson Parks Conservancy. The source of the money invested in vain is usually overlooked in accounts of the failed attempts to build a ramp at Promenade Hill.
Needless to say, everyone involved was more than a little disappointed when the discovery of electrical conduit buried under the very path of the ramp prevented the project from moving forward.
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Just fix the steps, put back the original fencing that still exists on Green Street, decent benches, let the spyrea actually grow, make St Genevive a fountain again and rebuild the hexagonal tea house with roof lookout .
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ReplyDeleteIt's the rare designer who honors history by doing less, not more. As it is, we barely appreciate that the Promenade is among the oldest public parks in the nation, an 18th century monument to a magnificent view.
Established by its grantors as a walking mall, "and for no other purpose whatever," the view is an artifact in itself, a relic in the evolution of Western perception.
The park was established for walking and viewing at about the same time that painted panoramas became a craze on both sides of the Atlantic. Actually patented in 1787, panoramas were an instant fascination particularly among the hoi polloi, and are credited nowadays for being perceptual forerunners of cinema's sequential progressions. (Fitting for the same location which birthed American landscape painting, and thus a new perceptual content, some consider Church's Olana to be a similar forerunner of film.)
Perception has its own history, albeit a largely unconscious one. In the late-18th century perception itself was changing along with our understanding of it. A specific phenomenon shared between the painted panoramas and the Promenade's actual vista was a poetic perception Bachelard called "intimate immensity."
The Promenade is a treasure, more important than we realize as a perceptual artifact in itself. If anything, we should return the park to its simplest lines, preserving the original walking-and-viewing experience to the best of our ability, "and for no other purpose whatever."
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ReplyDeleteIt would be my wish that even the 19th century innovations at the Promenade be removed, though perhaps with the exception of the benches which are, admittedly, not for walking. That said, the benches' now-unfriendly locations should be moved to the opposite, more public, and more Democratic side of the walking path.
Yes, let's reestablish the original fencing, as Vincent recommends, always seeking to preserve the park's simplicity.
We should begin by removing the advertising gimmick of the Thomas Cole House which doesn’t belong anywhere at the Promenade. When I asked the Director of the Cole House how the advertisement's 4 x 4 post came to disrupt the (perceptually) crucial terminus of the walking path, she told me that the DPW Superintendent had picked the spot. When I asked Rob Perry the same question he told me the Cole House decided where to put it.
It was due to their shared tastelessness and lack of irony that I began to take the grantors' terms more seriously. The Proprietors specifically granted the park "to the Common Council forever" so that we the people should have decided whether or not to plant advertisements right in the footpath of our "Public Walk or Mall" (Proprietors' Minutes, March 9, 1795).
Oops, small "d" democratic, of which I am.
DeleteI do wonder exactly what the place looked like before the 19th c improvements.
DeleteCould be most inspirational in its simplicity.
Imagine a licensed architect receiving a $7,000 fee to design a ramp without bothering to notice the presence of an electric conduit.
ReplyDeleteShouldn't taxpayers be rethinking the "use" once taxpayer money is needed?
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