UNDERHILL PLAYGROUND

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Location: Underhill Ave & Prospect Place, Prospect Heights, Brooklyn




A brief history:

I began working on the rough ideas for Underhill Playground in 2000 with Landscape Architect extraordinaire, Patricia Clark, from the New York City Parks Department. The original concept for the playground included more artwork than you see there today. Eventually many items were cut due to budgetary concerns. The pieces I designed and made models for that were finally included are: The two bronze sculptures in the Mini Play Park, the two Hand-Whale-Bird Fountains, the Wave Mosaic (behind the fountains), the Moth Motif, the Eyeball Being Mosaics and the Leaf Mosaic. Though many elements were cut the playground is still fantastical and fun.

Thank you to Mixed-Up Mosaics and Niko-Development for donating the fabrication of the Leaf Mosaic and installation. The playground would not have been complete without them. See more images below.



Overview of Underhill Playground at the final inspection.


Two Hand-Whale-Bird Fountains, park’s building with Eyeball Being Mosaics & Leaf Mosaic, cast concrete Moth Motif & Wave Mosaic.


Water Play Area


Fun!


More fun.


Fountain: concrete, bronze, mosaic.

It is a difficult process to join together three different media from three different contractors. Especially when the contractors are in three different places. Thanks to the expert fabrication of Keycast Stone (Queens, New York), Joseph Bronze (Portland, Oregon),and Mixed-up Mosaics (New York, NY) and the patience, and skill of the general contractors, Niko Development Corporation, the Hand-Whale-Bird Fountain exists.





Mixed-up Mosaics donated the fabrication of the mosaic version of the Parks Department leaf logo to replace the painted plywood logo that was previously installed there. The general contractor Niko Development donated the installation. The Leaf Mosaic was originally cut from the project due to budgetary concerns. It is the focal point of the park and the playground would not have been the same without it.



The windows on the existing comfort station were boarded up when I first saw it. (See image at the bottom of the page.) I thought it would be nice to turn the building into a creature by giving it eyes.



Bronze Mini Play Park:

This “play park” functions at doll house scale so children can roll toy cars through the structures and make up fantastical games. Originally there were eight mini structures but they were cut to two due to budgetary concerns.



Owlcowboy



Femme Cowbellboy





The Making of a Playground:

Not many people know what goes into the making of a playground in New York City. It is a tremendous collaboration requiring the time, effort, creativity, patience, and skill of many different people. It involves an unwieldy list of regulations and tight budgets.

It begins with the petitioning of the community. There are seemingly endless approval processes and contractor searches at the beginning, then many more approval processes during its construction, then maintenance of the playground for the duration of its life. Each approval process can take a long time because there are many people involved from many departments and agencies. There is so much that goes into this process that I'm sure I don't know half of it.

It is all worth it. It is a rare thing in this time of ipods and email to have a place that brings people out of their heads and their homes and into the community. It seems like such a difficult thing to do these days, but a playground makes it easy. It's important to make sure such a valuable piece of real estate gets done right.

I am grateful that I was able to be a part of the collaboration to create Underhill playground. And I am grateful to all of the private contractors, Park's Department and government employees who took part in making this happen.

I am particularly grateful to Niko Development for putting special care into the details of Underhill despite delays and budget concerns.

Thank you so much to Patricia Clark, the primary Landscape Architect on the project, and advising Landscape Architects Linda Lawton, Tom Cleveland, and Dennis Flynn. And thank you David Martin, David Carlson, Matthius Augustin, Pilar Alban, Theo Kavvadias, and the rest of the Brooklyn team.

Also, thank you to New York Art Commission who approved the artwork for Underhill Playground. Thank you to Director of Capital Projects Portia Dyrenforth-Cook and the Brooklyn Borough Office for keeping the site open for all and looking like new. And thank you to Council Member Letitia James, of District 35 where the park is located, and Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz.

Special thanks to the late Council Member James E. Davis for funding the project.

* I would like to dedicate the pieces I designed for Underhill Playground to my late father Jerome Peppito.

Julie Peppito

back to public art return to top see original models for Underhill Playground

Underhill Playground before renovation