'Sick of Being Militarized.' Permanent Fencing Coming to Popular Footpath.

The Worth Street entrance to the path between the Daniel Patrick Moynihan United States Courthouse, at left, and the State Supreme Court building. An 8-foot fence will replace the temporary barrier, with gates to be open between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. Photo: Carl Glassman/Tribeca Trib

It’s said that good fences make good neighbors, but there’s nothing good about these fences, so say the neighbors.

The federal government plans to permanently fence in a public passageway between the New York State Supreme Court at 60 Centre St. and one side of the Daniel Patrick Moynihan United States Courthouse at 500 Pearl St. Officials promise to keep the gates open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. But opponents, some of whom live at nearby Chatham Towers and Chatham Green, are skeptical that those hours will be honored and, in any event, don’t want the fences there. They see the barriers as a continuation of creeping restrictive access to other public spaces around their Civic Center neighborhood. 

“I live next to the courthouse and I’ve watched the neighborhood lock down gradually,” said Jeanie Chin, a Chatham Towers resident and Chinatown activist who spoke out last month at Community Board 1’s Landmarks and Preservation Committee meeting. “It started with Park Row. It was temporary and then more fencing came up. Little by little they would sneak things in.”

“Wonderful, you’re going to leave it open from seven to seven,” committee member Susan Cole said sarcastically. “But I come home at eight or nine, and I’m a resident of that community, and that should not be closed. And if you’re so concerned, put a security guard there.”

“The problem is, this is public land,” said committee co-chair Vicky Cameron. “And we are sick of being militarized.”

David Polk, the federal General Services Administration architect on the project, presented the plan at the meeting. He said the government originally envisioned a more than 10-foot-high “anti-scaling embassy fence” around the site and fewer hours open to the public. Over the years, he said, “we were able to negotiate with DCAS (the city’s Department of Citywide Administrative Services) and the law enforcement to help them understand this is meant to be a public plaza.”

Much of the security crackdown in the area came after 9/11. It was once, as one neighbor remarked, an active shady part of the neighborhood. “There were benches. You could listen to the fountain, people would play chess and children would play there.” The fountain is part of the 1996 Maya Lin sculpture, “Sounding Stones,” four granite blocks, each with an inverted fountain. The piece, which the accompanying plaque calls a “contemporary minimalist interpretation of the scholars rock garden,” is now blocked on one side by barricades between it and the courthouse.

Bill Bialosky, the architect who has worked with Lin for years, said in an email that Lin has been “disappointed by that treatment” and “hopes whatever they do will allow those barricades to be removed and the artwork treated with greater reverence and accessibility for the community.” 

The community board strongly opposed the fence, but it came to them as a fait accompli. Though the path is a protected landmark, it had already been approved by the Landmarks Preservation staff—meaning there had been no public hearing—and 95% of the site is federal property, Polk said. 

The planned fences, Polk noted, are a response to damage caused by protesters in 2020 as well as a need for crowd control during high profile court cases. They will replace the many movable barricades around the site. Polk said that the temporary barriers are “strewn around the area” and that a “cleanup” of the site is another reason for the new fences.

CB1 co-chair Alice Blank took issue with that notion. “The idea of cleaning up a public space by locking yourself out of it,” she said, “is absolutely outrageous.”