The Brooklyn Tower Officially Has Its Own “Henge”

By Michael Gonik

If you were sauntering down Dekalb or Vanderbilt Avenues this past week in the early evening, there’s a solid chance you came upon a mid-sized crowd—not in queue for some new restaurant, natural wine bar, coffee shop, or ungodly synthesis of these things, but for a memorable glance at Brooklyn Tower the very moment the sun crowned it like the “Eye of Sauron” from Lord of The Rings.

It was the fulfillment of local prophecy for nearby residents, who spotted the uncanny similarities between the physically and spiritually empty luxury high-rise and Tolkien’s menacing embodiment of evil as soon as the scaffolding came down. But it made for quite the spectacle, nonetheless, laying the foundation for a new tradition on the Clinton Hill/Fort Greene border. And it’s all thanks to Kevin Clyne, an urban planner based in Park Slope, who did the hard math to calculate when the sun would hit Brooklyn Tower just right and where best to post up and gaze west (from August 8 to 13, between 6:25 p.m. and 6:35 p.m.), and also dubbed the solar event “Sauronhenge” in a post on the New York Groove blog.

While the name may need some work, the views were good and inspiring enough to draw a few dozen observers to the corner of Dekalb and Vanderbilt, where it seems quite likely people will continue to gather annually for what could very well be the borough’s very own version of “Manhattanhenge.” Here’s hoping that doesn’t come with any extra baggage, or any of the weird, forboding, ominous shit looking at Brooklyn Tower for too long feels like it might invite into our lives.

If you missed it, you can catch a quick peek at “Sauronhenge” in the clip below.