Brooklyn Bridge Park is an 85-acre (34 ha) park on the Brooklyn side of the East River in New York City. Designed by landscape architecture firm Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, the park has revitalized 1.3-mile (2.1 km) of Brooklyn’s post-industrial waterfront from Atlantic Avenue in the south, under the Brooklyn Heights Promenade and past the Brooklyn Bridge, to Jay Street north of the Manhattan Bridge. The site includes Brooklyn Piers 1–6, the historic Fulton Ferry Landing, and the preexisting Empire–Fulton Ferry and Main Street Parks. Two Civil War-era structures, Empire Stores and the Tobacco Warehouse, will also be integrated into the park. After the city and state signed a joint agreement in 2002, site planning and project funding proceeded, with construction started in 2008 using land reclaimed using soil from the new World Trade Center site.
Brooklyn Bridge Park is overseen by Brooklyn Bridge Park Corporation, a not-for-profit entity responsible for the planning, construction, maintenance, and operation of the park. The Corporation’s mission is to “create and maintain a world class park that is a recreational, environmental and cultural destination enjoyed by residents of, and visitors to, New York City.”
The Brooklyn Bridge is a hybrid cable-stayed/suspension bridge in New York City and is one of the oldest roadway bridges in the United States. Started in 1869 and completed fourteen years later in 1883, it connects the boroughs of Manhattan and Brooklyn, spanning the East River. It has a main span of 1,595.5 feet (486.3 m) and was the first steel-wire suspension bridge constructed. It was originally called the New York and Brooklyn Bridge and the East River Bridge, but it was later dubbed the Brooklyn Bridge, a name coming from an earlier January 25, 1867, letter to the editor of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle and formally so named by the city government in 1915. Since opening, it has become an icon of New York City and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1964 and a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark in 1972.
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