Park Slope Mystery: Sculpture, Prop or Playground Equipment?

1.

Steve Tobin???

2.

What's it called--Homage to 125th Street?

3.

looks like tree roots to me?!

4.

Mmmm I love white chocolate covered pretzels

5.

that kid with the blue shirt seems to like it

6.

Looks like the tree roots sculpture at Trinity Church in Lower Manhattan.

7.

LOLOLOL #5

8.

I just went by that thing. There’s a line of kids waiting to take a turn.

9.

The American Planning Association has selected Park Slope as one of 10 Great Neighborhoods in America for its architectural and historical features and its diverse mix of residents and businesses, all of which are supported and preserved by its active and involved citizenry.

"No neighborhood in America has a finer and more intact collection of late 19th-century row houses than Park Slope," notes architectural historian and Columbia University professor Andrew Dolkart. "Block after block is virtually unaltered, with houses ranging from grand townhouses designed by Brooklyn's leading architects, to long rows of vernacular speculator-built housing designed by the obscure architects who provided character to so many URBAN neighborhoods."

Park Slope has a little bit of everything: stately brownstones, attractive apartment buildings, a farmer's market, independently owned businesses, transit, an adjoining park, and active residents, some of whom moved to the area as URBAN homesteaders when it was being abandoned in the 1960s. The efforts of the local Fifth Avenue Committee have helped maintain affordable housing for long-time residents and preserve the neighborhood's economic and social diversity.

Despite the neighborhood's outstanding amenities and singular quality of architecture, Park Slope suffered along with many URBAN neighborhoods from disinvestment and decline during the decades following World War II. Many grand four- and five-story single-family homes of the Victorian era fell into disrepair or were chopped into rooming houses and small apartments.

The start of a several-decades-long turnaround began in the 1960s when visionary residents, among them Evelyn and Everett Ortner, moved into the neighborhood. The Ortners, who purchased an 1886 brownstone on Berkeley Place in 1963, became famous as two of the neighborhood's strongest advocates, encouraging friends to move there and campaigning against the kind of mortgage redlining they had experienced when moving into a "declining" area.

More recently, the department of city planning rezoned Park Slope in 2003 to cap building heights on the brownstone side streets while accommodating taller apartment houses in the Fourth Avenue transit corridor.

Historic in design and modern in amenity, the livability of Brooklyn's Park Slope is no hyperbole. Its architectural, recreational, transportation, and community assets all combine to make it a great community of lasting value.

10.

lets hope they design it to be kid proof. i'm sure kids would climb that thing. i know i would hehe.

11.

You would think playground equipment that big would be designed to entertain more than one kid at a time.

Your tax dollars at work

12.

I tried to climb it yesterday. TOO SLIPPERY! There is a flat spot at the top where the roots are coming out that sreams, "Sit on this!" None of the teenagers there could make it to the top which means...

13.

http://www.nycgovparks.org/sub_things_to_do/attractions/public_art/pa_temporary_exhibits.html

14.

if he hadn't already installed aluminum-cast olive trees in Battery Park City this year, I would've said this was an Ugo Rondinone sculpture.

15.

Sorry, Mr. Tobin...this thing is ugly. My first impression was not that of tree roots, but rather of the vascular anatomy of the lower half of the human body. Anyway, this space is one that is used by families to play ball. Now, that space is unavailable for that purpose. Move it somewhere else, Tupper.

16.

the gate from 40 bond ran away to brooklyn

17.

the gate from 40 bond ran away to brooklyn

18.

Both of my dogs liked it a lot--anything new to pee on is okay in their book.

It's too thick and vertical to climb on, but I think kids will probably get a kick out of running around it.

I can see why people say it looks like tree roots, but when I first saw it this morning (I was coming from the direction of the Farmer's Market) it looked like people playing ring-around-the-rosy.