DARK SKY FOR NEW YORK CITY
-------------------------
John Pazmino
NYSkies Astronomy Inc
www.nyskies.org
nsykies@nyskies.org
1995 June 1
Introduction
----------
New York City in the 1990s went into warp speed to reduce or
eliminate luminous graffiti over it. It mounted several massive
projects, which I wrote notes about in Eyepiece, newsletter of amateur
Astronomers Association, homed in the City.
I here collect several of them into this piece for the NYSkies
web. The notes are lightly edited but otherwise left as originally
written. The issue date is that of the last note.
= = = = =
world's largest light abatement scheme
-------------------------------------
1993 January 1
The Grand Central district of Man.hattan embarked on a colossal
light abatement project, by far the largest in urban America. When
completed in 1994 the blocks surrounding the railroad terminal will be
illuminated with allnew lamps, signs, and signals. The design
specificly addresses aesthetics, quality-of-life, and stray and wasted
lIght, as well as the usual concerns of safety and comfort.
While the Association, thru members working in the Grand Central
district, promoted the light abatement program on astronomy grounds,
the essential impetus carne from good old American horse sense: lousy
lighting makes lousy living.
Ground broke for the project on Thursday 19 November [1992] at
42nd St and Vanderbilt Av, for replacement of sidewalk and curbing.
Next comes the pulling down of the 'cobrahead' streetlamps, garish and
glaring headsigns, chaotic traffic signals, and reckless spotlights.
Of special interest are the new streetlamp standards. These are Art
Deco units placed along the building line about 4 meters up. The bulbs
are hooded and focused to throw their light onto the sidewalks and
away from pedestrians' faces. Altho the new bulbs are about as
efficient as the present ones, energy savings come from the removal of
excess old installations and better placement of the new ones.
The project covers 38th to 48th Streets, 2nd to 5th Avenues, the
third largest urban zone in the country, exceeded only by the rest of
Manhattan and Chicago's Loop. The light abatement is a major component
in the area's overall effort to improve and beautify the streetscape.
Other elements include tree plantings, info kiosks, pavements, social
service facilities, convenience shops, and street furniture. The
scheme is entirely privately funded by the Grand Central Partnership,
a recent coalition of corporations in the district.
Very little orthodox stargazing is pursued in Grand Central, being
that it is mainly commercial and corporate in zoning. But the
redeployment of the streetlamps and removal of badly lit signs will
open up clear sightlines onto the stars for casual pedestrians.
The Grand Central light abatement project is the first of several
afoot in the City. During the 1990s 34th Street, Times Square, and
86th Street will, too, mount their own light abatement programs.
= = = = =
Grand Central not the ~argest
-------------------------
1993 May 1
Several readers pointed out that the Grand Central light abatement
sr.heme is not the overall largest such project in the world, as our
article title in [January 1993] stated. It is merely the world's largest
effort in a cosmopolitan center, soon to be rivaled by others in the
C:ity. From combined accounts it appears that the actual world's
largest light abatement project is the Buffalo úCommons scheme in the
Great Plains states. This effort excedes the Grand Central one by many
orders.
The Buffalo Commons project redresses the human degradations of
nature, including light pollution, by migrating people from delicate
areas into those better able to withstand human influences. After the
1980 census the Great Plains states realized that thousands of tiny
towns and villages dotted thruout the middle quarter of the United
States simply were dying out. Their population, industry, farming, and
other activity were dwindling, turning the villages into atrophied
vestigial habitations incapable of self-sufficiency. Indeed, commonly
a whole town has fewer residents than a housing tower in the City and
a entire county has fewer inhabitants than a single City block.
Tho minuscule in population and activity, these towns can emit
superabundant light pollution over hundreds of square kilometers. This
is due to the haphazard and incompetent lighting in the towns and the
nonappreciation of its harm to the environment. The stereotypical
scene of a rural stargazer suffering under a light-washed sky features
just such tiny decaying communities.
In the early 1980s the states embarked on a massive project to
delete these moribund communities. By tax breaks, low-interest loans,
property buyouts, and Middle-American barrel-thumping, the remaining
residents of these villages are resettled in a larger and viable town.
Usually this is the county capital or service center. When this
migration is complete, the old community is torn down, the ground
plowed under, and stigmata of human intrusion removed. Finally, in a
fitting ceremony, the land .is "handed back to the buffalos".
When completed in some twenty years there will be a 800Km swath
from the Canadian to the Mexican borders vacated of human intrusion
(except for the set of larger viable towns). Thus, in addition to
rectifying the abuse to nature_inducted over the entire prior history
of American occupation of the Great Plains, vast new tracts of dark
skies will be opened for astronomy.
= = = = =
Grand Central on high iron
------------------------
1994 April 1
Grand Central shifts into high gear this spring for transforming
its environs into the coronal nabe of Earth. Not only for cityfolk but
for astronomers. The Terminal is thecynosure of Midtown and 'Notre
Dame du Novayorke', besides the country's second busiest rail station
(Penn Station is first).
Since last year [1993] the station and its surrounds have
astronomers rubbing their eyes in numbing disbelief. Why? They are
witnessing Earth's premiere urban scheme of light pollution
eradication.
Thru the Grand Central Partnership, a coalition of area businesses
a ha'click around the station, the entire street scene is under
massive overhaul. The omnipresent cobraheads are right now being
ripped up on corner after corner thruout the district. In their place
are set 3-1/2 to 4 meter tall] ornamental luminaries that avoid most
up and side spray. In many places the new lamps are set on building
fronts about 3 to 3-1/2 meters up and aiming down onto the ground.
Storefronts are under renovation subject to a comprehensive set of
guidelines issued by the Partnership and distributed as brochures and
model plans. Garish glitzy lighting is taboo in the district, as are
glare-filled signs, banners, and lamps.
street kiosks have occluded lights which do not trespass onto
adjacent properties. Cove and canopy lamps are encouraged to
illuminate advertising and window displays.
Architecturally notable towers are installing accent lighting. No,
they are not being nuked with photons like buildings in downtowns
across the country. These fixtures highlight the buildings with
tightly focused spotlights. Or with the newly invented light engines.
Some blocks have no street lamps at all! Yet they are bathed with
enchanting 'moonlight'. How!? Atop surrounding towers are placed
batteries of lights aimed at the street and hidden from direct view
unless, of course, one stands exactly in line with them. Thus the
ground is illumined without disrupting sightlines along the streets.
As if this rehab -- a tear-jerking dream almost any where else in the
world -- is not enough to draw trainloads of darksky fans to Grand
Central, there is an extra jewel to marvel at. The world's largest
skymap is being restored! A civic pat on the back for our profession
exceding the cost of all four American prewar planetaria.
This, the legendary ceiling in Grand Central, displays the autumn
and winter stars -- in mirror reversal! -- was painted from a
mediaeval starchart, itself a view from 'outside' the celestial
sphere. Tiny lamps [light up] for the brighter stars. All this will be
redone to clean off decades of grim, mold, and other gook over three
years beginning this summer.
There is a hitch. The whole enchillada is 35m above a floor
crisscrossed by a quarter-million people every day. No scaffold can be
raised up due to the colossal interference with this traffic. So!, the
repainting and rewiring will be done from galleries hung from the
steel frame of the tErminal above and behind the starchart.
= = = = =
world's greatest effort at urban light abatement
----------------------------------------------
1995 January 1
The world's greatest effort at urban light abatement, and other
quality-of-life improvements, activates on 1 January 1995. It excedes
by an order the old record holder, the Grand Central scheme. This new
project is the Lower Manhattan Business Improvement District (BID),
the newest of a score operating thruout the City. A BID is an
autonymous coalition of businesses and merchants in a delineated
praecinct for bringing about various civic and social betterments. To
accomplish these aims the BID tithes the occupants in its praecinct.
The Lower Manhattan BID embraces all of the old City of New York,
the southern tip of Manhattan from the Battery to City Hall. It
excludes a few blocks already under special protection. This area,
about 1.6 square kilometers, was the entire City of New York in
colonial and early American years.
For over a century it has been the heart and brain and soul of
Earth. Long reserved for corporate and commercial use, since about
1970 it emerged as a major residential district. The once barren
sidewalks of Wall Street after hours are now stuffed with people at
every hour of the day and night. The district's population nowayears
is some 70,000, up from barely three thousand in 1970.
The streetscape, tolerable as it may have been to a commercial
center, is totally unacceptable for the end-of-century City. The BID
wants to rid the streets of tawdy signs, glaring lights, trashy
banners, abandoned and broken furniture, outdated fixtures, and other
obnoxious features. It seeks to remake the parks and squares, repave
walks and corridors, improve utilities and services, and constrict
automobile traffic. In the process of rebuilding Lower Manhattan,
virtually every single sky-whitening lamp will be torn out.
One major project of the Lower Manhattan BID is the blanket
replacement of streetlights. Lamps of starsafe design -- like those
already rising up around Grand Central -- will stand in the cardinal
streets like Broadway, Water st, Fulton st, Trinity PI, Wall st.
An other early project is to redo the parks like Battery Park,
Nevelson Square, Liberty Plaza, and City Hall Park. Their haphazard
furniture will be completely undone along with some reckless
illuminations.
Sky-washing cars will be removed from new pedestrian corridors
like the present one in Nassau Street. The BID wants several others
such as around Fraunces Tavern, Whitehall, and Maiden Lane.
Paralleling the displacement of cars from the streets is the
demolition of cartowers and carparks. This tactic follows the lead of
the World Trade Center, which already shut down its 2,000 slip garage.
To recognize the round-the-clock nature of Lower Manhattan the BID
will encourage the conversion of corporate space into residences. In
1994 there were about 2.1km2 of vacant space in the district, all in
older smaller structures ripe for renovation or demolition. Some of
the sites will become greendots but most will be rebuilt as homes.
Allowing a spot conversion into 100m2 homes, there is potential in
Lower Manhattan for up to 10,000 new houses. Yet none will spill a new
drop of light into the sky because they will be fully enclosed within
the former office towers and allnew residence towers.
To compensate for the withdrawal of ediurnate office space new
corporate towers will be erected, patterned after the existing
chateaux-in-ciel. This new construction will stabilize the office
space at around 15km2 in the district.
So vast and grand is this effort at urban enrichment that it
excedes the ordinary comprehension. It is an entire city -- before the
eyes of the city astronomer in the diurnal cycle of life -- under
transconfiguration into a coronal habitat of the planet. And it will
be done in one decade. Hence, darksky advocates already revere it as
the greatest urban light abatement on Earth not only of this century,
but also far into the next one.
= = = = =
City astrolife soars
-------------------
1995 June 1
Summer 1995 begins a major stepup in the City's omnibus project at
optimizing its quality of life. Two existing business improvement
districts (BID) expand into new territory and a new one is fired up.
All three, Grand Central, 14th Street. and Upper East Side, happen to
be on Manhattan.
The Grand Central BID, which operates Earth's second largest urban
light abatement effort (Lower Manhattan is first), expands into about
20 additional blocks. The new borders are 35th st (contingent with the
34th st BID) and 53rd st. In these blocks will be applied the same
measures astronomers still stand in awe over around Grand Central
itself. Of special note is the global ripping out of the cobraheads.
(Did you see how it's going along during the EarthFair?) The 14th
street BID, already acclaimed for its new starsaving lamps, now
embraces Union Sq up to 17th st. This area is earmarked for massive
rebuilding under strict QOL regulations. For example, the block now
clearing on Broadway, 13th/14th st, will sport a new mixed use 30sh
story tower of completely starsafe design.
The new district is Earth's third largest urban light abatement
scheme but it's #1 in area and population: the Upper East Side BID.
This ropes in the whole flank of Manhattan from the East River to
Central Park, from 59th St to 96th st. Its 200,000 residents have the
equivalent in overall vigor to Charlotte or Denver or Seattle. It is
also the home of the Association in its Yorkville nabe.
Because of the predominantly residential character of the UES,
wheras other BIDs are mainly corporate and commercial, more emphasis
is pressed on the street ambiwnce than elsewhere. We, [the AAA,] as a
corporate citizen of the City, will soon enjoy a far more happy and
pleasant surrounds for our members, clients, and visitors.
The ongoing QOL enhancement project has already in the last five
or so years enlarged astronomy in the City. This is vividly evidenced
by cleaner and darker skies, rising AAA membership, increased
attendance at AAA events, and more vigorous personal astroactivity.
= = = = =