Good morning. It’s Wednesday. Today we’ll find out about a $108 million project in Brooklyn that removed the old cobblestones from streets and put them back, with new infrastructure underneath. We’ll also find out where in the world Mayor Eric Adams is. Hint: It’s about 6,300 miles from City Hall.
After six years and $108 million, the final pieces of a restoration project are about to be pounded into place with mallets in Dumbo, Brooklyn, today — six cobblestones. The project involved no buildings, only streets, sidewalks, sewers and water mains along 26 blocks in Dumbo and nearby Vinegar Hill along the Brooklyn waterfront. Contractors hired by the city’s Department of Design and Construction removed, reworked and replaced the cobblestones on all but one of those blocks. Then, on Gold Street between Front Street and Water Street, they drilled away the asphalt layer and brought in enough cobblestones to cover the block. Some were repurposed from Pearl Street. Some came from a company that reclaims and resells such things. What’s under the cobblestones on the 26 blocks is new. Tearing up the streets gave the city an opportunity to modernize the infrastructure, and it took it. Workers upgraded the sewer and storm water systems. The Dumbo Business Improvement District says that the pipes beneath the streets were old and “caused widespread, regular flooding,” including after Hurricane Sandy in 2012. As part of the project, the city installed storm sewers on streets that had never had them. Some 2,100 feet of combined sewers — sewers that had handled storm water and wastewater at the same time — were converted to handle only wastewater, and will not overflow, the city says.
The city also added 46 catch basins to channel storm water and prevent flooding. It laid 3,140 feet of new water mains and upgraded 6,600 feet of existing ones. And it installed nine new fire hydrants and replaced 32 old ones. You can’t see the new pipes and other underground components. What you can see, the cobblestone streets, look old. That’s appropriate for Dumbo and Vinegar Hill, which together had the greatest concentration of cobblestone streets in the city when the restoration began. The cobblestones had to be replaced by hand. My colleague Winnie Hu caught up with the employees of the city’s Department of Transportation who tend cobblestone streets — bricklayers hired and specially trained for street work — when they were in SoHo, another neighborhood with streets that avoided the shift to asphalt in the 20th century. The stones, also known as Belgian blocks, were installed in Dumbo and Vinegar Hill as early as the 1870s and as late as the 1930s, according to the city’s Department of Design and Construction. Belgian blocks apparently never came from Belgium. It was once said that they were used as ballast on colonial-era merchant ships coming from England, only to be dumped into the East River. That would have cleared space for cargo that the ships could carry back to Europe. But the Historic Districts Council, a preservation group, said in a 2017 study that “we have not found primary evidence to confirm this practice.” The study also said that as the 19th century gave way to the 20th, the city’s commissioner of public works declared that all the granite paving blocks destined for New York had been quarried in New England. The ones now in Dumbo and Vinegar Hill were taken out and put back after the infrastructure work was completed, with some new cobblestones added to fill in gaps. Alexandria Sica, the president of the Dumbo Business Improvement District, said she was “thrilled to have been able to preserve the Belgian blocks while making them bikeable and accessible for everyone.” The stones were cut before they were put back so that they are flat on top, making a smoother surface for wheelchairs and meeting the standards of the Americans With Disabilities Act. More than 110 new pedestrian ramps were installed at street corners, and 1.7 miles of granite bicycle lanes were added in the two neighborhoods.
Along the way, the crew unearthed some 2,800 artifacts. The oldest dated to the late 1600s, but most were from the mid-1800s to the mid-1900s. Among them was a copper button that the design and construction department said dates from the last half of the 19th century and carries the New York State Excelsior symbol. Another object that surfaced was a clay smoking pipe with a Liberty Eagle motif from the first half of the 19th century. Most of the other objects found beneath the streets were “domestic, utilitarian and architectural ceramics,” the department said, but the workers who specialize in cobblestone restoration have found railroad spikes and ties for tracks that used to carry trolleys along the streets. Anthony Crisanti, a city transportation bricklayer who works on cobblestone streets, recalled pulling out an old horseshoe while repairing a cobblestone street in SoHo several years ago. “Who knows how old that thing is,” he said. “It’s a piece of history that I held in my hand.” WEATHER Expect rain this morning, then sunshine and a high in the upper 40s. The sky will cloud over tonight, with a low around 38. ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING In effect until Nov. 27 (Thanksgiving). The latest New York news
We hope you’ve enjoyed this newsletter, which is made possible through subscriber support. Subscribe to The New York Times. Adams travels as his time in office draws short
As his term in office winds down, Mayor Eric Adams has picked up the pace of something he loves to do — travel abroad. He flew to Albania last month on a four-day trip that his aides said was designed to promote business and tourism. Then, on Friday, he returned to Israel for a four-day trip to meet with business leaders and politicians, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. And when he left Israel on Tuesday, it was not to head home — but rather to fly on to Uzbekistan. My colleagues Dana Rubinstein and Emma G. Fitzsimmons write that in the 48 days between Oct. 6, when he landed in Albania, and Sunday, when he is scheduled to return to New York, Adams will have spent roughly 27 percent of his time thousands of miles away from the city he governs. And there may be more mayoral travel in the offing: He has discussed with aides his desire to travel to several countries in Africa before his term expires Jan. 1. Representatives for Mr. Adams declined to reveal how much New York City taxpayers were spending on these international expeditions, but they suggested the cost was worth it. “The mayor has long emphasized the importance of honoring and uplifting New York City’s diverse communities, whether he is celebrating different heritages at Gracie Mansion or discussing innovation and economic development with foreign officials abroad,” said Fabien Levy, a spokesman for the mayor who accompanied him to Israel. “The mayor continues to govern, lead and deliver for this city regardless of where he is.” METROPOLITAN DIARY Hot Coffee
Dear Diary: I was taking the Q train downtown on an unexpectedly warm September day. Many people had apparently neglected to check the forecast, and I was surrounded by people in coats and puffer jackets. At the first stop after I got on, a man wearing a light jacket and holding a hot cup of coffee boarded the train and sat next to me. He spent the next few seconds struggling to take his jacket off with the coffee in his hand before putting the cup on the seat. I watched nervously, expecting the cup to tip over and spill on me once the train began to move again. My face must have betrayed what I was thinking, because the man looked at me, picked up the coffee and, without saying a word, handed it to me. I held it until he got his jacket off, and then handed it back. We rode downtown in silence. — Mariana Paez Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Tell us your New York story here and read more Metropolitan Diary here. Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B. P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here. Winnie Hu, Lauren Hard and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@nytimes.com. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox.
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