Reclaim/Reuse/Recycle! A CLINTON HILL HERITAGE DOCUMENTATION STUDIO

By Ethan Brown, Mahnoor Fatima, Tara Hopp, Megan Maize, Katherine Pioch, Diego Rivadeneira, Alison Weidman, Jeremy Ziegler

PR 839 Spring 2022 Studio

Chris Neville

Rebecca Krucoff

Studio Members

Ethan Brown

Mahnoor Fatima

Tara Hopp

Megan Maize

Katherine Pioch

Diego Rivandenra

Alison Weidman

Jeremy Ziegler

Welcome to Clinton Hill, Brooklyn! Or is it Fort Greene? Or Bedford-Stuyvesant? The Gold Coast?

The study area that we surveyed in January 2022 for our Spring Heritage Documentation Studio has been known by many different names over time, reflecting the flexible boundaries and diversity of functions and people we observed. Throughout the semester we kept coming back to a foundational question: what is this place?

The answer changes based on the respondent and lies somewhere between the historic buildings and the people here today. To answer the question, we surveyed examples of historic spaces that evolved to meet contemporary social purposes in and around the study area. What we found were fascinating stories of wealthy industrialists, working-class immigrants, working women, Vaudeville actors, artists, and community gardens.

Pratt Institute sits at the center of our study area, and for our project it was a way to name and define the neighborhood. The Pratt Area saw a second wave of growth and development in the late 19th and early 20th century with an upper-class corridor developing on Clinton Avenue in the North; in the rest of the study area, housing was built by local developers for middle- and working-class families in the 1870s.

As a wave of industrialization in the late 19th and early 20th century washed over the Pratt Area, a wellspring of new forms of transportation into and out of Brooklyn developed, including the Brooklyn Bridge (completed in 1883) and the Myrtle Avenue Elevated Line (which ran in 1888). In the decade that followed, the gradual departure or death of the once-large industrialist community—paired with a new wave of migration within and immigration to the United States spurred on by World War I and urbanization— resulted in a large demographic shift in the community.

In the 1950s–1960s, the area experienced another shift from being a majority-white community to one chiefly populated by poor and workingclass people of color. This “white flight,” catalyzed by post-war federal housing policies that both encouraged disinvestment in cities and white settlement in the suburbs, was used as a rationale for the demolition of swaths of neighborhoods for urban renewal projects.

By the 1960s and into the 1970s, political and social policies stimulated the deindustrialization and disinvestment that left the Pratt Area a stressed and fragmented version of its former self. The area was sustained and gradually mended with the continual efforts of neighborhood leaders, community-led block associations, and ambitious creatives, which helped orchestrate the area’s resurgence as the vibrant commercial corridor one experiences today. The Pratt Area today is a predominantly urban residential neighborhood hosting two colleges: Pratt Institute and St. Joseph’s University. The Myrtle Avenue commercial corridor lies at the north with many businesses (art stores, galleries, bars, and restaurants) catering to residents and the Pratt student-base.

The buildings, like the people they serve, require reinvestment and care to evolve and survive. Whether adaptive reuse gives an abandoned structure a new life or reuses it for a new function based on economic and social changes, what is important is that the built fabric of the past continues to exist as a space where the life of the community can continue to unfold for many years to come.

Our methodology for this conclusion has come out of our inductive historical documentation process. It started by dividing up the larger study area into smaller sections and assessing individual sites for recurring patterns. However, moving into the demographics and archival work, we noticed a changing pattern of people within the census data, and a continuous diversity of people from a wide range of ethnicities and social strata. Because these changes were so widespread and consistent in the data, we could assume that there were broader historical patterns to explain why certain communities and businesses settled in their respective locations.

We realized that we needed to zoom out and look at wider historical contexts and archival research. We looked at fire insurance maps, newspaper archives, and other historical documents to understand the primary forces of change. When that became too abstract and distant, our conversations with the stakeholders from the Myrtle Avenue Business Improvement District and the Myrtle Avenue Revitalization Project helped bring a lived experience to the story we were uncovering on maps. This process helped us uncover three kinds of largescale change: physical (the changes of the buildings), historical (connecting to the wider history of Brooklyn and New York) and social (the lived experience and culture of those who long lived in the area).

The term ‘adaptive reuse’ arose as a thread connecting the physical changes witnessed in the neighborhood to larger historical changes and the micro-social changes experienced by those in the neighborhood. Adaptive reuse was the most apt term to describe the historical developments in the area and works as a phrase commonly accepted in architectural practice and history to describe buildings that have changed in function or structure over time.

In How Buildings Learn, Steward Brand explains how all buildings on some level have to adapt to their external environments, contrary to the idea that a building is ‘fixed’ in space and time.1 The term ‘building,’ much like the term ‘adaptation,’ speaks to not only the verb and noun (that which is being built or adapted) but also the active effort to build or adapt. Many see adaptive reuse as a positive force which prevents the wastage of existing buildings and counters any further environmental degradation that may occur when building a replacement. Adaptive reuse, however, has a dark side tied to the devastation that came with urban renewal and gentrification. Many have lost their homes, businesses, and communities due to these processes, and could not return to their homes due to high rents and mortgages. Our interpretation of adaptive reuse hinges on not only physical changes like remodeling or conversion, but also the way that relationships between spaces—and the people who use them—are changed due to changes in the larger area.2 Sociologist William H. Sewell explains that our built environment informs our social experience, thus as the environment changes, cultures and institutions change their practices over time.3 Heritage preservationists like Dolores Hayden also adopt such frameworks by emphasizing the need to consider all aspects of social histories before adapting and restoring buildings, because simple materiality cannot explain the context.4 Within the preservation field more specifically, adaptation is defined by the National Trust for Historic Preservation as: “the process of converting a building to a use other than that for which it was designed.”5 We are trying to expand beyond this definition, and use adaptation as a radical tool. This type of adaptation is the spontaneous, user-led transformations of existing historical buildings that create shared meanings through use. It is these changes that inform our use of adaptive reuse and vision of it through a bottom-up perspective rather than the real estate and economically-driven one with which it is usually associated.

Our study focused on the narrative of buildings, their builders, occupants, and workers. The changes to the buildings are often unplanned and have greater repercussions than imagined by individuals. It was our responsibility to uncover as many changes as possible, and to give agency and justice to all community members involved in the production of the space. We highlighted the main eras of change that prompted new waves of adaptive reuse which we used to categorize the overlapping historic eras of Clinton Hill:

Urbanization (1801-1933), Industrialization (1901-1941), Urban Renewal (1935-1968), and Cultural Shifts (1920-2004).

We uncovered stories of pain, resilience, economic prosperity, and diversity that mirrored the wider urban history of New York and the United States as a whole. We also began with walking as a spatial pedagogy. Such embodied, bottom-up, and communitydriven spatial approaches have been spearheaded by the likes of Henri Lefebvre, Jane Jacobs, and Michel de Certeau. Through our compiled tour and Spotify playlist, we invite those interested to walk the Pratt Area and learn the stories that are hidden by changes and time. We hope to inspire anyone with an interest in their community to actively participate in its reinvention, imagine collaborative futures, and transform spaces to preserve them for the future rather than just demolish the past.

Thesis

Historic Preservation

THE IMPERMANENCE OF THE VODOU RELIGION IN THE HAITIAN DIASPORA

by Claude Jeffrey Charles-Pierre Spring 2022

If one were to ask a Haitian in East Flatbush, Brooklyn where is Gran Bwa located, they will tell you it’s in Prospect Park near the Parkside Avenue entrance. They may point you in the direction of the lake if they are near or in the park. If you were not familiar with what goes on at Gran Bwa, it would be hard to find this special and sacred place in the community. The meaning of Gran Bwa is large tree/wood and the spirit of trees.

Raised in a Protestant household, Haitian immigrant and artist Deenps Bazile moved to East Flatbush, Brooklyn in 1979. Deenps lives a short walking distance from Prospect Park near the Parkside Avenue entrance. In an interview, Deenps explains how the sounds of drums and a spirit guided him to Prospect Park near the south section of the lake to carve a sculpture from a large tree stump that was about four feet high and at least four feet wide. Deenps carved a large human head, two miniature human faces, a lion, and a Legba. A Legba is a Lwa (god) in Haitian Vodou.

The park’s natural elements, such as the lake and how the sun and wind reflect and move the trees, remind him of being in Haiti. This is how this site became known as “The Gran Bwa” site in Prospect Park. Haitians in the community began to congregate every weekend at Gran Bwa and still do to this day. Deenps became known as Neg Gran Bwa (Man of Big Tree). Deenps recalls the local Haitian Protestants against him carving the tree stump. While watching him carve the tree stump they began to chastise him for bringing evil to the Prospect Park area. Not too long after that, the sculpture was vandalized and destroyed by someone lighting it on fire. The remains of the carved tree stump eventually were chopped, adding to the destruction of the Legba sculpture. Today, there is only the outline remnant of the Gran Bwa sculpture, and no one knows the exact reason why it was destroyed. Some speculate that the neighbors did not like the weekly gatherings or did not want Vodou ceremonies at the park. Neg Gran Bwa says, “The sculpture was removed but the spirit of the Legba is still present.” Today there are three large stones purposely placed at the location of the original Gran Bwa woodcarving.

One can argue that this act of vandalism affirms Vodou as part of the emergence of the “despised history” that Andrew Herscher conceptualizes in “Counter-Heritage and Violence.” Herscher writes about the tangible heritage of churches and mosques that were vandalized or destroyed by its counterpart for the erasure of that heritage which results in a counter heritage1.

The Vodou religion and its intangible practices are highly susceptible to being erased because of its non-physical presence and consequently being memorialized in either the built or natural environments. Traditional Vodou ceremonies are practiced based on memory and memorialized through oral histories mostly near a body of water or in the woods. The marginalized history and rituals of Vodou in the environment have endured adversity for several centuries despite the counter heritage that it faced. If the tangible places of worship were removed (church, mosque, temple) from Catholicism, Judaism, Islam, their rituals would still exist. These spiritual religions are still practiced today because it is about the belief system that remains in existence. How can Vodou’s religious practices or ceremonies in non-traditional environments or spaces kept in memory be documented or archived? What is the role of preservation in capturing these moments?

My work aims to raise awareness of the counter heritage Vodou that Vodou continues to endure while embracing and documenting the cultural heritage traditions of Vodou that is ingrained in the daily life of the Haitian community.

1 Andrew Herscher, “Counter-Heritage and Violence”: Future Anterior: Journal of Historic Preservation, History, Theory, and Criticism, Winter 2006, Vol. 3 No. 2(Winter 20006), pp 24-33 University of Minnesota Press

The concepts of co-production and hybridity can be used as a lens to investigate the cultural heritage of Vodou in the Haitian Diaspora in Brooklyn. They can build an understanding of heritage that collapses the here/ now and there/before between the (then) Bois Caïman ceremony in Haiti and the (now) celebration of it in Brooklyn and between the (there) Botanicas in Brooklyn and (before) temples in Benin West Africa. Co-production of Vodou ceremonies is simulated in an environment that is different from its origins, but the rituals remain in existence. The hybridity of Vodou in Haiti and Brooklyn stems from a cross between what and how it was practiced in the different regions of West Africa. ADAPTATIONS

ACROSS TIME & SPACE

Transformations

The understanding of placed-based heritage elsewhere and its ethos of hybridity can be recognized by its necessary diversity and constructive impurity. Discovering that my Haitian ancestors derived from West Africa either from Benin, Togo, the Kongo, or Dahomey Kingdoms, led me to the realization that they all have the Vodou Religion in common. The distinct altars of worship, outfits of the dancers, the beating of drums, and singing during offerings, all are culturally co-produced in a built or natural environment. The constant adaptation, remaking, and transformation of the Vodou Religion from the past, present, and future is the makeup of its cultural-religious heritage.

Since 1992, a few Haitians, a few Haitians from the recently-designated Brooklyn community “Little Haiti” adjacent to Prospect Park, celebrate the Bois Caïman ceremony annually in August to commemorate the anniversary of the 1791 insurrection of the enslaved Africans in Haiti that catapulted the Haitian Revolution. This makeshift, outdoor cultural meeting space occurs at the Gran Bwa site. The wood sculpture that bore its name is no longer at the location, but the site is still used as a gathering place for the Haitian community to bond and experience the healing power of the Gran Bwa spirit associated with trees, plants, wind, and water.

The yearly celebration of the Bois Caïman ceremony at Prospect Park Lake in Brooklyn is in danger of being eliminated due to the lack of awareness of the general public, the migration of Haitians to the suburbs, the gentrification of the surrounding neighborhoods, and the proposed capital improvement of Prospect Park Lake by the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation. Preserving this makeshift, coproduced space is imperative imperative and underscores the importance of viewing place-based heritage in a way that embraces hybridity and coproduction across time and space and that builds off the practice and ethos of Vodou. Religious practices or ceremonies that occur in non-traditional religious environments should not be excluded from Preservation. The practices and history of Vodou as part of the Haitian Diasporas culture is fundamentally relevantto the current conversations of equity and inclusion in the Historic Preservation space.