#LegendaryLES: A Preview of “The Lowline”, NYC’s Future Underground Park

The Lowline will occupy a 116-year-old abandoned trolley terminal below Delancey Street on Lower East Side that’s been used for storage since 1948.

The Lower East Side (LES) and East Village (like the rest of New York City) are packed with history, cool stories and drama. Today I’m doing a mini-salute to the areas with three posts about a new show Sister’s Follies at Abrons Arts, the legendary 80s club, The Pyramid and the proposed new Lowline Park.

In New York City, we’ve been hearing about this future underground park for years, but now it looks like it’s going to become a reality thanks to a successful Kickstarter campaign, the team behind the project just opened the Lowline Lab in the former Essex Fair Retail Market. Just 1,200 square feet, about 5% of the future park, will be open to illustrate the technology involved.

Visitors to the Lowline Lab will see wooden terraces, metal canopies and live plants all bathed in actual, subterranean sunlight. The light reaches the verdant underground space through an optical system invented by James Ramsey, the man responsible for the Lowline. Along with co-founder and Executive Director Dan Barasch, Ramsey started laying plans for an urban underground park in 2008. Polycarbonate tubes outfitted with lenses and mirrors bring the sun’s rays from the roof to the lab.

Demonstrating just how much vegetation the park will be able to support, over 60 species of actual plants are currently growing at the site including pineapples, mint, strawberries and thyme. An anodized aluminum canopy, a combination of hexagonal and triangular panels form a shapable canopy that can adapt to the needs of what’s growing in the lab. Light is piped into the plumbing system through mirrored collectors, which focus the sunlight into a concentrated beam that’s 30 times brighter than ambient sunlight. Getting the light underground is one thing, but you can’t just blast a garden with a concentrated beam of sunlight. A set of lenses is embedded into the canopy, softening the light, and then a chandelier-like set of reflectors further distributes it. Even though the eventual park will comprise three underground city blocks, there will be no artificial light at all.

Expected to open sometime in 2020, the 1.5 acre Lowline Park will completely transform a former trolley terminal running under Delancey Street (entrance at 140 Essex St.) that hasn’t been used since 1948. The expected cost is between $60 and $75 million. The Lowline Lab is open to the public on weekends now, and will also hold special events in the coming months. You can find out more here.