Nicole McGuire- Acitivty 8

Nicole McGuire
Activity 8

On Sunday April 11, our group went on a field trip with Group 3, first to the East Village than to a part of Brooklyn called DUMBO. The day turned out to be beautiful, with the sun shining and made the trip so much more enjoyable. Our tour guide for our group was Johanna and she showed us all different sections of her neighborhood in the East Village. Group 3’s tour guide was Maya and she showed us the more historical side of Brooklyn.

We all met at Astor Place right in front of this huge statue that moved when you pushed it. As we started walking through the East Village on St. Mark’s Place there was all these different little boutiques and shops selling little odds and ends. There were tattoo places, places to get piercings, smoke shops, and bars and restaurants all over the place. “The ballet of the good city sidewalk never repeats itself from place to place, and in any once place is always replete with new improvisations" (Jacobs, 110). Not one of the streets was alike which made it more interesting. We walked past Cooper Union College (which I never even knew existed), she showed us the only Polish Catholic Church left in New York, and took us through this park called Tompskin’s Park. During the summer, the park had a public pool which I found interesting because there are not that many public pools in NYC. The park was pretty crowded with all different types of people, and there was dog shows going on also. The park was filled with people of all ages and was actually quiet crowded because of the nice weather. Johanna showed us different community gardens, and I did not even realize they had these in NYC since I have never actually seen one. But it was so beautiful how everyone came together and uses there own ideas to make the garden unique and different. We then went to eat in this small restaurant called Tahini to eat lunch. They served different types of food such as falafels. This was the first time I ever ate a falafel, and I must say it is one of the tastiest things I have ever ate.

From there we all took the 6 Train to the last stop which is Brooklyn Bridge. We then walked over the Brooklyn Bridge to the section of DUMBO. At first I felt a little uncomfortable because there was not many people around and I was not familiar with the neighborhood. “And third, the sidewalk must have users on it fairly continuously, both to add to the number of effective eyes on the street and to induce the people in buildings along the street to watch the sidewalks in sufficient numbers.” (Jacobs, 35). Maya (who was our tour guide) informed us of different facts while walking over the bridge such as when the bridge was built and the main reasons for the bridge being built. I found it very interesting that, that part of Brooklyn used to be basically all factories and that was the main reason for the making of this bridge. As we reached Brooklyn, I started to realize that there were not too many people around. There were a lot of people walking over the bridge to Brooklyn, but I did not see any of those people as we started walking off. As we started walking through Brooklyn we passed some Project Housing. These project houses made me think of Kunstler’s idea of “frontier neighborhood” because of the project houses being in the middle of a developing area. “The kind of houses that the FHA frowned upon were those in the cities: old houses with leaky plumbing, jammed into narrow lots on crowded streets, inhabited in some cases by immigrants, or, increasingly, African-Americans” (Kunstler, 102). Because literally about 2 blocks away from the projects there was a very quiet neighborhood with homes being built as it seems. We then reached Old Fulton Street and waited in line for the Brooklyn Ice cream Factory. The line was pretty long but it was definitely worth the wait. As we were standing on line, Johanna tried to grab a chair from on of the tables so that she did not have to sit on the floor and one of the workers told her she was not allowed to move the chairs. This made me think about the movie we watched in class based on Whyte’s “The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces” about how people move chairs in different directions and spaces and how people sometimes follow.





I would definitely say this is going to be a field trip that I will always remember. I had such a good time with the group and experiencing different neighborhoods. I learned a lot of new things from this trip and also know different sections of NYC that I have not really spent much time in. I would really like to walk over the Brooklyn Bridge again since I do work really close to the bridge. Going on this trip also made me realize the different types of neighborhoods people live in and the different experiences they go through.