Seize the Day for a Cherished BAM Cultural District
Posted on 25. Jan, 2010 by Howard Pitsch in Arts on The Hill
Oh, let us look up my friends. For too long Fort Greene has endured flubbed hopes as once-promising plans for developments demised. Yet the expectancy for a BAM Cultural District intensifies the spirited revival of our area including the Brooklyn Academy of Music—whose edifice now sparkles with a recreated cornice.
BAM is a not-for-profit entity chartered by our city’s Cultural Institutions Group, a set of 33 arts efforts in all the boroughs for which NYC supplies direction and some capital funding. In 1999, the former head of BAM, Harvey Lichtenstein, now retired, along with president of BAM, Karen Brooks Hopkins and others, looked askance at the desolate parking lots nearby. That set a spark. A BAM Local Development Corporation was formed to help rejuvenate the community. Later, it was merged into the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership (DBP), headed by Katie Dixon. That is under the auspices of the NYC Economic Development Corporation and other agencies.
Meantime, the BAM corporation negotiated for the Mark Morris Dance Group to center at 30 Lafayette Avenue, bringing dividends related in an adjoining article. BAM helped secure 80 Hanson Place as a home for MoCADA (Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Art), and as office space for assorted arts groups. Not only as food for mind, but for belly, the BAM group brought us the farmers’ market at Fort Greene Park.
So, what is now in store for the BAM Cultural District? Multiple units are being brought forth by DBP and BAM. At the former Salvation Army structure in Ashland Place, just south of BAM, work is set for April 2010 to enlarge the building for arts groups, completion slated by 2012. It will open up Ashland Place with a welcome mat as it becomes the Richard B. Fisher building, named for a benefactor, the late Mr. Fisher, a chairman of Morgan Stanley. Built in 1927, the hall was designed by Voorhees, Gmelin & Walker. New plans, while retaining the landmarked façade, are by Hugh Hardy. Within, it is to have the Judith and Alan Fishman Space, a flexible staging theatre with 260 seats. There will also be a very large rehearsal studio and a roof garden. As Ms. Hopkins explains, “What is special about the new facility is that it can present more intimate works for about six months of the year.” These presentations will be selected by BAM’s Executive Director, Joseph Melillo, who brings such imaginative productions to the BAM main stage. Several classrooms are to be included to increase BAM’s artistic outreach to some 25,000 of our neighborhood students.
In the remaining half year the Fisher Theatre will be made available at deeply subsidized rates to host community and educational events. “For that,” says Ms. Hopkins, “we’re looking specifically toward giving groups centered in Fort Greene and Clinton Hill and other local organizations first crack in using the space.”
Rhapsody to Rap
Added to all this, consider that largely African American endeavors are presented by Urban Bush Women, and by 651 Arts, at LIU’s Kumble Theatre; the Paul Robeson Theatre operates in the former St. Casimir’s Church in Greene Avenue; DanceAfrica presents at BAM. The Irondale Theatre is adapting in the old Sunday School Hall of the Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church. Not least is the BAMcafé where we can attend popular entertainment from Rhapsody in Blue to rap, and the BAM Rose Cinema where we can see first-run and classic films. In time, it is hoped to have an additional state-of-the-art three-screen cinema that can keep us au courant via BAMcinema’s tie-in with the Sundance Film Festival. Who dares to say that Historic Fort Greene won’t feature a most appetizing menu for culture ã la carte — and more opportunities for local employment?
Renovation of the Strand Theatre at Fulton/Rockwell Place is another diadem for our area, a BRIC project also being overseen by the DBP. Work is targeted for 2011 to redesign this 1919 theatre by Charles Lamb where Warner Brothers Vitaphone first replaced the silents, and where Al Jolson bombasted in “The Jazz Singer” in 1927. Architect Thomas Leeser is preparing plans to refurbish the edifice for a restored 250-seat theatre, to give Urban Glass a street-level display, and to update quarters for BRIC which offers us first-rate presentations This writer has pleaded that the stately Ionic columns will remain at the front, and that the incised Tempus Fugit and Carpe Diem axioms will endure in the façade.
With regret we have foregone an architectural masterwork library where the parking facility and the Midtown Florist now stand along Flatbush. Funds were to0 scarce for the Brooklyn Public Library’s wondrous glass-sheathed structure shaped like a glistening solar boat. The design was the concept of the famed Enrique Norton of Mexico. Still, if the recession ever abates, city agencies are evaluating ideas for a new building on that site that may also be designed by Mr. Norton. It would comprise residential units and perhaps 15,000 square feet of cultural space, increasing BAM’s ties to and employment within our community.
A more solid concept is already in hand for the Hugh Hardy-designed Theatre for a New Audience, directed by Jeffrey Horowitz. Ground is to be broken this spring for a 300-seat theatre, due in 2012, at the Lafayette Avenue lot adjacent to the Mark Morris Dance Group. Its entrance will face Ashland Place. With all this luster fluttering the dendrites of pleasure, surely the merchants of FAB (Fulton Area Businesses} can count on more traffic to help turn their books a deeper shade of black. Another coup will be when the American Ballet Theatre comes for two weeks to BAM at Christmas time, 2010, with The Nutcracker by Tchaikovsky. Better still, the ballet troupe has engaged in a five-year contract to perform here.
21st Century District
A major new thrust in early 2011 will be the opening of the BAM Hamm Archive Center in a 3,800 square foot space on the ground floor of the Forte building at Ashland Place and Fulton Street. Named for the benefactor, Charles J. Hamm, former CEO of Brooklyn’s Independence Community Bank, the archive will showcase valuable artifacts pre-dating the Civil War. Included are materials from the original BAM in Montague Street, 1861 until consumed by fire in 1903, and the new BAM since 1908. Vital documents portray luminaries such as Enrico Caruso, Booker T. Washington, Sarah Bernhardt, Paul Robeson and Winston Churchill. Ms. Hopkins adds: “This will give our district something different from many others, a way to attract visitors by day, a new asset for our local merchants. The space can be used for BAM art exhibitions and other events. That will help Fort Greene and Clinton Hill establish an urban cultural district truly for the 21st Century.”
To assert a brighter appearance for the BAM Cultural District, the streetscape will be upgraded and with open plazas for our public use. Ken Smith, landscape architect, has drafted plans that may include a refurbishing of the BAM Park catercorner from the Peter Jay Sharp opera house. Our Fort Greene heartbeat quickens.
