Broadway, New York: Sculpture with nature

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Victoria Keller enjoys seeing the famous street become part of an art work

In New York City, particularly in Manhattan, there has been a lot of park development in recent years, along both the Hudson River and the East River.  The High Line, the raised railway track turned park, is another example, over on the west side of Manhattan.  Construction will soon begin on its final instalment, which will allow it to reach from West 12th Street all the way to West 34th Street.

Broadway, which stretches from the very southern tip of Manhattan all the way to its most northern reaches, has recently come in for a bit of a make-over as well.  In the past year, Mayor Bloomberg has had traffic restricted on stretches of Broadway and those stretches have been made over into seating areas flanked by bicycle paths.

Within the pedestrian plazas there are patio-type tables and chairs with, in the summer, lots of very large potted plants, and now, with Broadway Green, there is sculpture that includes nature.  Created by the New York-based environmental artists Patricia Leighton and Del Geist, there are seven elevated steel frames,  six of them supporting green grass cubes, with the seventh showcasing a large slab of green slate. 

The first sculpture that meets the eye is the large wedge of green slate, sited at 36th Street, pointing towards the trim green cubes that march up Broadway towards 41st Street, towering over the lush plantings in pots that outline the plaza seating areas.  Between them are tables and chairs, used by passers-by, whether tourists or the local office workers.

The purpose of the steel frames and their elevation is to foster a relationship with the surrounding architecture.  The buildings that line the area are extremely tall and the idea is that the raised cubes of green highlight a 'Green' philosophy in an extremely vertical city setting.

The installation is set within an area called the Fashion Center, which was once the heart of  New York's 'rag trade':  an area  full of factories and show rooms catering to  clothing manufacturing. And while there is still evidence of this in the presence of showrooms, shops and the nearby Fashion Institute of Technology,  much of the actual manufacturing has long gone.  Even so, it is still a bustling busy area, starting just north of Herald Square and Macy's department store, and becoming the Theatre District as you approach Times Square at 42nd Street. 

Patricia Leighton and Del Geist have been working together on site-specific installations for many years, most of them much grander and permanent projects, while Broadway Green is ephemeral and will be in place only until the autumn.  Their work together exhibits profound respect for the sites, with detailed studies of the geology, geography and history of each area contributing to the end design. 

Recently completed collaborative projects by Leighton and Geist include Barum Stenning, 2007, in Barnstaple, England, commissioned by Devon County Council, which is a series of sculptures sited on a roundabout, and Passage, 2003, a massive landscaped area at the US Border Station in Roosville, Montana.  One of their best-known projects is Sawtooth Ramps, 1993, a series of huge mounds in Scotland along  the M8 between Edinburgh and Glasgow, which is being considered for national monument status by Scottish Natural Heritage.

Broadway Greenis a summer public art installation presented by the Fashion Center Business Improvement District and is part of New York City Department of Transportation's Arterventions programme, an urban art programme.