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NEWARK VISITORS CENTER PROPOSAL
NEWARK VISITORS CENTER PROPOSAL
Consistent with the site’s history, the design for the Newark Visitors Center by Stephen Alton Architect, P.C. is proposed as mediation between urbanity and landscape, infrastructure and community. The Center celebrates the heritage of the local Ironbound community as well as Newark’s expansive and rich industrial legacy. The center’s purpose is to strengthen the public-private relationship of the community by encouraging residents and visitors to use its gardens, auditorium, café, conference center, and archive library.
The design of the Center draws from the historical Morris Canal which is architecturally referenced along Raymond Blvd. on the one side of the triangular site, and which acts as a transition between urban density and the industrial landscape of the Passaic River. The other border, Jersey Street, is activated in this design to establish a public and private transit node and visitor disembarking point at a lower plaza level. In a similar manner, the southern gardens serve as a contemporary piazza of subtle ramps and shaded allees engaging the local Ironbound community and terminating in a secondary entrance to the conference space and Newark archive library.
Conceptually the main building is a knot in a larger urban narrative. Programmatically, as visitors descend along a path of exploration, Newark’s unique urban and historical heritage is explored; artifacts are displayed in cases; the auditorium’s exterior LED surface displays changing images; and framing devices call out important site references. The layered effect enforces engagement with the history of the site, Newark and the larger community.
Development of the project narrative began with critique of the distinctive triangular form of the site. The question was posed whether the site was a product of a convergence of typical grid development or a generator of the fractured grid geometry that surrounds it. Our investigation revealed a more complex and nuanced condition that was neither rationally deterministic nor formally arbitrary as illustrated in this animation.
The "Neck" of the sedentary Passaic River provides the conceptual frame of reference against which land development, transit, and identity were invariably measured. As late as 1800, the area around the large curve of the "Neck" was little more than a transit stop enroute to New York. Newark’s' economic epicenter was further NW based around the historic cross axes of Broad and Market Streets.
Market Street running roughly E-W first delineated the marshland to its north that later became the site. Around 1850, the Morris Canal that linked industry and commerce as far as Pennsylvania and New York, was constructed. As a major service conduit, the canal effectively drove the industrial boom in Newark, later replaced in the early 1900's with a more efficient and widespread railroad network.
Moreover, the Morris Canal ran literally along the southern boundary of the site parallel to Market Street. Conceptually and functionally, the site was framed by two fluid water bodies, which soon justified the need for a small service street as mediation, which later became Jersey Street. Concurrently, a web of constrained street grids nested around major arterials during the 1850’s. Later this contorted mesh of streets hugging the river expanded and projected rationally as orthogonal grids away from the Passaic River.
The railroad encouraged localized development along its footprint, as well the need for additional connections across the river, justifying Jackson Street Bridge. When the Morris Canal was decommissioned, the footprint was converted into the commercial Raymond Boulevard around 1960.
Throughout this period until the present, the historical arterials, Market, Ferry and Morris Canal have persisted in their location. The key neighborhood south of the site is the North Ironbound community that has remained cohesive in part due to the stability of the urban geometry around the river. Similarly, even though Jersey Street has long been rendered obsolete, it remains physically intact due to its relationship with the Passaic River, and the former Canal.
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