Brooklyn Artist Building A Foot Path To Governor’s Island
Photo: Nancy Nowacek
In the not-so-distant past, Brooklynites were able to walk to Governor’s Island via an exposed sandbar that appeared at low tide and crossed the length of the Buttermilk Channel. Unfortunately, that path to Governor’s Island is now gone, but if one artist gets her way, we could be walking over there in the near future.
Via Brooklyn Based: Artist Nancy Nowacek has been entertaining the idea of building a bridge to Governor’s Island for a few years now, especially after discovering that the landmass is a mere 1200 feet (or four city blocks) away from parts of Brooklyn. So, Nowacek came up with the idea for the Citizen Bridge, a bridge constructed of plywood floating on shipping drums that would provide foot access to the island from Red Hook for one day (that’s all the Coast Guard will give her).
This past weekend, Nowacek introduced prototypes of the bridge to the general public at City of Water Day on Governor’s Island and will continue private testing later this month. If testing continues to be successful, she predicts we could see the Citizen Bridge sometime in 2016. But before all that, Nowacek will first create a Kickstarter to raise the million dollars she needs for the project—which isn’t really asking much of a nation that can raise nearly $50,000 for a potato salad.
If you’re interested in learning more about the Citizen Bridge (or volunteering to help build it), visit Nowacek & Co. online at www.citizen-bridge.com.
Follow Nikita Richardson on Twitter @nikitarbk
