Between Queens and Manhattan

Working at Colgate University is giving me the opportunity to make some small traveling around NY State in which, undoubtedly, my very first target has been New York City.

As well known as "The Big Apple" or just "The City" this destination has everything to offer, whatever your needs are, there will always be something you will find extremely interesting to do in one of the most multicultural areas of the world. 

Since my most tangible hobby, so far, is architecture, I took this wonderful chance to visit, among other masterpieces, Louis Kahn's Four Freedoms Park, located in between Queens and Manhattan. 

Ugly map of the location of the map

Therefore, the aim of today's post is to share with my dear readers how me and my wonderful companion found the best way to get to the park and how we perceive it. If you had enough reading just let me know that it is definitely worth to visit.

Louis Kahn working in his studio in Philadelphia

Not only an extremely controversial personality but also a very skillful architect, Louis Kahn has gone through the history of architecture as a professional able to give each material its desired character, building dialogs among users and spaces (as seen in the National Assembly Building of Bangladesh) able to open the most closed mind using the light as a tool. Going along his works we can enjoy his masterful artistic control of architectural expression to create a richly layered spatial experience.

During his relationship, while developing his professional career, with the ex President of the United States, Franklin D. Roosevelt, he revered him for enabling him to support his family during the early years of his architecture practice through housing and community planning projects that were part of Roosevelt's New Deal programs. Kahn shared Roosevelt's desire to enrich the lives of all people, fact that ring them together to bear the reality of the Four Freedoms Park.

As far as I've read, during design review meetings for Four Freedoms Park with the, by then, President, conversations often deflected off topic, becoming soft discussions of Roosevelt and his policies.

Unfortunately, never after Louis was done with the whole proposal, death found him in 1974 in Pennsylvania Station in New York, paralyzing the progress of this park...

Of course I would never share a non happy ending post, luckily on March 29, 2010, 38 years after its announcement, construction of Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park began. And so we enjoyed few days ago.

Next pictures have been taking by me, please respect them and contact me if you aim to use them, I will gladly share them with you.

Just arriving

Remarkable issue, there is no way to get to the island walking, either by car from Queens or using the underground, which operates differently during the weekends (nyc subway...)

Speed under the bridge

Chrysler building from the park

Sealed

Railing detail ?

This way up

From the bow

From the stern

Happy-family event in the park.
Perfect place for a friendly lunch

Kahn's design makes perfect use of the triangular shape of the Park's site, emphasizing it, and employing what could be called a forced perspectival parti to draw and focus the visitor's gaze toward the colossal head of Roosevelt at the threshold to the 'Room.' Underlying Kahn's design is a naval theme, a nod, perhaps, to Roosevelt's love of and connection to the sea, and to the unique location of the site. The park design is symmetrical, and the construction drawings themselves are dimensioned off a centerline, as is standard in naval architecture. A sketch of an earlier iteration of the design shows a floating, tug and barge-like structure against the skyline of the city.  The final scheme acts as a prow to the island’s "boat."