Beach Beneath The Bridge

By Barry Owens
POSTED OCT. 5, 2006

The stretch of shoreline along the East River Waterfront directly beneath the Brooklyn Bridge is shorter than a city block. Still, enough sand, water, seagulls, driftwood and oyster shells are scattered about to satisfy almost everyone’s definition of a beach. When the tide is out there is room for dozens of umbrellas, even a volleyball net or two.

Yet, the Brooklyn Bridge Beach, as some locals call it, is a lonely place. Even on hot summer “beach” days, few footprints are to be found in the sand.

While there is a small (pet-size) door in the railing of the nearby esplanade, the beach is not public. Some neighborhood residents occasionally squeeze through the door or hop the railing to dip their toes in the water, skip rocks on the river, or launch a kayak. But the police frown upon such activities and have been known to shoo people away.

The water is too dangerous and the sand too dirty, the city claims, to allow public use of the beach, which exists on no city map and has no official name. Plans to incorporate the beach into the new East River Waterfront Plan were abandoned by landscape architect Ken Smith, a designer for the project, when the city’s Economic Development Corporation (EDC) explained to him that a nearby storm drain deposits city filth into the river and fouls the sand.

Smith, who lives in Tribeca on Warren Street, said he was disappointed.

“I thought it was a really cool idea,” he said.

The new waterfront will instead feature a man-made beach on Pier 44 on the Lower East Side. Brooklyn Bridge Beach will remain, as Smith calls it, “a relic, a piece of sand, a mud flat that is very appealing but that is not really accessible.”

That does not sit well with some outdoor advocates, such as Tribeca resident Rob Buchanan, who is an avid boater and a chronicler of New York’s waters.

Buchanan has a website, NewYorkHarborBeaches.org, that lists what he calls all the “soft landings” in the harbor, each of them a sandy spot where it is possible to haul in from the river and drag a boat ashore. Brooklyn Bridge Beach is one of those places. Buchanan dreams of one day seeing a boat locker standing beneath the FDR Drive to house his and other people’s boats.

“The beach belongs to us,” he said. “It doesn’t belong to the EDC or the Coast Guard.”

He decided to test that theory in early August, calling on boating enthusiasts to meet him on the beach one Sunday afternoon for a luau.

Buchanan, cut off by harbor police, never made it ashore. Others landed successfully, though, and danced in the sand wearing grass skirts and leis. Some even went for a swim. Then the cops showed up and sent them all away.

“If you want to swim, go to Jones Beach,” one officer told them.

Gary Fagin, a longtime South Street Seaport resident and an advocate for the neighborhood, recalls when the beach was little more than asphalt rubble littered with abandoned cars. Today, he said, he often takes his young son for walks on the beach. He is not eager, though, to see it become a boat landing or a popular spot for sunbathers.

He told this to Buchanan one recent morning as the two met at the beach to discuss its future.


“There is nothing I would like to see more than 50 sailboats and kayaks down here,” Fagin said, pointing toward the north side of Pier 17. “But I don’t relish bringing attention to this place.”

Buchanan disagreed. “It’s just too precious to ignore,” he said.

Not everyone shares Buchanan’s recreational tastes.

Mozella House, a resident of the nearby Smith housing complex, has been ignoring the Brooklyn Bridge Beach for 50 years.

“I don’t care how close it is to my house,” she said as she passed by one morning. “I don’t like beaches.”

“I prefer a bench,” said another longtime neighborhood resident, a retiree who lives in the Knickerbocker Houses.

Don Bryant-Scott, who pushes a broom and empties garbage cans along the waterfront for the EDC, said he wished he could ignore the beach—but he gets paid to clean it up.

“It is a filthy place,” he said. “I wouldn’t go on it.”

One morning, in addition to an assortment of candy wrappers, soda bottles and beer cans, a syringe was half-buried in the sand. A deflated basketball bobbed in the tide. And in the middle of the beach, a long-dead raccoon grew more gruesome by the hour.

Bryant-Scott raked up all that he could fit into a single garbage bag. He left the animal for another day.

“That raccoon,” he said. “I hope it washes back out to sea.”