Since the City Council’s approval of the construction of Dock Street Dumbo means the building currently home to the Arts at St. Ann’s will be demolished, the question of where St. Ann’s will move is likely to generate much debate over the next several months. Susan Feldman, the ruling force of St. Ann’s, has indicated a desire to move performances into the nearby Tobacco Warehouse, the now roofless enclosure that stands to the west of its companion structures, the Empire Stores warehouses. Actually, the future of both the Tobacco Warehouse and the Empire Stores ties into the development of Brooklyn Bridge Park, raising the further issue of how this whole set of now empty 19th century structures can best serve the park’s purposes. A developer designated several years ago to convert the Empire Stores for restaurant and cultural uses proved unequal to the task. David Walentas, converter of DUMBO from an industrial to a residential neighborhood and also the senior developer for Dock Street Dumbo, has long had his sights on this set of warehouses.

In all of this the Brooklyn Bridge Park Development Corporation will be playing a key role, and it will be weighing proposals in terms of what best serves the financial and public-use needs of the park, as well as meeting requirements for historic preservation. As to the Empire Stores, the problem is how to make workable spaces out of an interior filled with close-together wooden columns, while not altering the exterior. The Tobacco Warehouse presents a different challenge: how to get the most benefit from a walled enclosure lying almost under the Brooklyn Bridge. There are those who like the idea of it as a roofless ruin and would like to see it left as it is. As a ruin of that kind, though, it is not really very old. Its roof and third story were removed only within the past couple of decades for structural safety reasons. What remains is not exactly ancient Greece. On the other hand, the rather sizable block enclosed by the brick walls present an opportunity for a public use in line with the ambitions for an internationally significant park.

Whether as a new home for St. Ann’s Warehouse or as some other attraction, the Tobacco Warehouse space can be developed in a way that does not infringe on its historic walls, nor eliminate the views now to be had from there of the Brooklyn Bridge (views that were not available in the building’s pre-“ruin� stage). The answer is to build a glass structure within the enclosure – a structure that will be independent of the old brick walls while yet permitting outward views through the arched openings of the original windows and, at least equally important, permitting upward views to the Brooklyn Bridge. Steel-supported glass construction is now so commonplace that it poses no unusual engineering difficulties, and although not the cheapest kind of construction, its cost is not out of line with other construction of respectable quality. An extraordinary and transformative project like Brooklyn Bridge Park, after all, demands design, materials and finish of a high order.

Imagine a performance inside a glass building with bridge, river and skyline as bits of background, while daylight shifts into dusk and darkness – stars even becoming visible – and it seems hard to think of a more suitable, more enchanting role for that now vacant enclosure. It’s not only the best solution, but in truth the only solution for a space that cries to be put to use but that is also precious for its historic aspect and its rare situation below a historic bridge.

Whose Marbles?

All right then, let’s look to ancient Greece – or, rather, to how modern Greece is paying tribute to its ancient heritage. The recently opened Acropolis Museum in Athens also makes use of glass, even as it renews the issue of who properly owns the artifacts of history. It has taken a long time to get there (something that advocates of Brooklyn Bridge Park know something about), but Greece finally has a proud showcase for treasures from its most hallowed site. Glass plays an important role in the museum’s design, its top floor having been canted 23 degrees from the alignment of the floors below so as to be parallel with the Parthenon, visible through a glass wall past works and copies of works that were once part of the Acropolis.

The building of the museum, as a replacement for the inadequate space that had existed within the rock of the Acropolis, has been as much a political as an esthetic and preservationist undertaking. Through the museum’s construction the Greeks have hoped to right a wrong they feel was done to them in 1803, when Lord Elgin collected loose pieces of sculpture from around the Parthenon as well as removing many of the sculptural elements still affixed to its walls and shipping them all off to Britain. As the British ambassador to the Turkish-based Ottoman Empire that then controlled Greece, he got an agreement to let these artifacts go. In 1816, pressed for money, Elgin sold the collection to the British Museum, where it has resided ever since and been known as the “Elgin Marbles.� To the British, Elgin’s act was accomplished legally, as well as being justifiable on the ground that these invaluable works received a safe and proper place where the world could admire them. To the Greeks, Elgin’s act was plunder not excused by any agreement with the despised Turks. Now that they have a major museum (designed by the Swiss-born New York architect Bernard Tschumi), they contend that any argument about their inadequacy as custodians has no further validity. They want the “Elgin� marbles back.

In a gesture of seeming compromise, the British Museum offered to lend the marbles for three months to the new Athens museum. But there was a condition: the Greeks had to recognize British ownership. Unsurprisingly, the Greeks declined. They were not about to cede the right. (Besides, we’re dealing here not just with months but with millennia.) While the British are not about to let go of these treasures, the British Museum and other major institutions are obviously disturbed by the claims of countries once under foreign domination that items of their heritage have been, if not strictly illegally, at least immorally taken from them. If Britain should lose the Elgin Marbles, the French have to wonder what if the Greeks should also want the Venus de Milo and the Winged Victory of Samothrace from the Louvre. The Metropolitan Museum of Art could stand to lose much of the contents of its recently revamped Greek and Roman Hall. And, for the Brooklyn Museum, there is the question of Egypt asking for the return of our museum’s fine ancient Egyptian collection.

The question of who owns the art has been bruited about for some time, and museums here and in Europe have given back some items about which there was doubt as to how “legitimately� they were obtained. If they were clearly transported out of their countries of origin following the enactment of laws against that, then they have generally been returned. However, many museum specimens were obtained prior to the enactment of such laws, and the museums want to keep them. For the people living in those museums’ countries there is a feeling of entitlement: Why should we have to go all the way to Athens or Cairo to see what has “belonged� to the Met or the Brooklyn Museum for upward of a century or more?

The growing assertiveness of the countries of origin ensures that the issue will not go away. With their new museum the Greeks are keeping it very much alive. Eventually, perhaps, international agreements will be reached on some kind of joint ownership and circulation of ancient works of art that have long been away from their homelands. But that’s something else in this contentious world that will not come easily.

— Henrik Krogius, Consulting Editor Brooklyn Heights Press & Cobble Hill News

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