Brooklyn Bridge Park Conservancy Calls Off Pier 6 Lawn Naming Contest

By on March 13, 2013 11:15 pm in brooklyn bridge park

The New York Times reports that the Brooklyn Bridge Park Conservancy has called off its naming contest for the lawn at Pier 6. The paper reports that the BBPC did so after a movement began to name the area after war photographer/DUMBO resident Chris Hondros who was killed two years ago in Libya. The conservancy claims that the spirit (and the rules) of the contest was to name the lawn after flower or other topographical inspirations. The Times says over 200 people voted for naming it after Hondros.

NYT: But when a campaign to name the lawn for Chris Hondros, a war photographer from Brooklyn who died two years ago, gathered steam, the conservancy backpedaled. Then on Tuesday, it decided just to call the whole thing off.

“While the idea of naming a lawn in memory of someone is certainly a lovely idea, we’re keenly aware that there are so many deserving and special Brooklyn residents to memorialize, and it felt like naming the lawn for one person isn’t fully representative of that,” said Nancy Webster, executive director of the conservancy, a nonprofit group that supports the 1.3-mile waterfront park.

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  • Jorale-man

    I’ve been trying to figure out which lawn this contest referred to. I assume it’s the patch of grass by the volleyball courts on Pier 6? If so, it seems like a rather small space to be making such an issue out of it.

  • Weegee

    I’m surprised there isn’t daily grousing about giving S. Parkes Cadman a whole plaza…if there ever was, it’s just as well that no one notices. I’m not a Harry Chapin fan, and the Pierreponts never did me any favors, yet I played in the playgrounds that bear their names without being distracted by it.

    Today would have been Chris’ birthday. He was, as a fellow lensman points out, not just a “war photographer,” and probably would have discouraged such an appellation. More accurately, he was a photojournalist who went where the news was. I’d spent many an hour sandwiched with him in press pens outside of courthouses here in New York, and will always treasure a photo he took of me on the morning Bernie Madoff walked free for the last time.

    We can also thank our lucky stars that our neighborhood has been spared the burden of having a lengthy list of tragic casualties in our lifetimes. 150 years ago, it was vastly different. There’s nothing for the 16-year-old Brooklyn Eagle pressboy who was shot through the chest at the battle of Bull Run — his home and church were demolished, and his body was never sent home — because, sadly, it wasn’t a singular incident.

  • David on Middagh

    I would have honored *all* the journalists, photo- and otherwise, by naming it “Muckrakers Lawn”.

    Has a nice cadence to it, I think.