Eyes on the Street: New Places to Sit on Myrtle Avenue

A new tree guard bench on Myrtle Avenue near Carlton Avenue. Photo: Stephen Miller

Combining public seating and tree protection, the Myrtle Avenue Brooklyn Partnership has begun a second round of street furniture installations. The project is bringing 28 tree guards and 22 benches to Myrtle Avenue between Flatbush and Classon Avenues by the end of the year, joining 40 tree guards and benches that were installed in 2011.

At one of the tree pits on Myrtle Avenue this summer, local residents set up folding chairs and hung out on the street, making it an obvious candidate for a tree guard bench, said the Partnership’s Daniel Scorse.

Students in art classes at neighborhood schools created the designs for ten of the new guards, which were then prepped for fabrication by the Pratt Design Incubator for Sustainable Innovation.

The Partnership is seeking sponsors to help defray the cost of maintaining the benches and tree guards. The latest installations were funded by the Partnership’s BID, ConEd and New York State urban forestry and Main Street programs.

ALSO ON STREETSBLOG

Myrtle Avenue Street Furniture Initiative: Community Design Workshop

By Jason Varone |
The Pratt Design Incubator for Sustainable Innovation, Pratt industrial design students, and the Myrtle Avenue Brooklyn Partnership will hold a community design workshop tonight, Tuesday, November 13 from 6 to 8 p.m. in Pratt Institute’s Higgins Hall as part of the Myrtle Avenue Street Furniture Design Initiative. The workshop, during which designers will present preliminary […]

Brooklyn’s Myrtle Avenue Renaissance

By Jason Varone |
  In an attempt to turn Myrtle Avenue into a thriving "Main Street" for Fort Greene and Clinton Hill, the Myrtle Avenue Brooklyn Partnership is now working with Project for Public Spaces "to survey, analyze, and produce conceptual recommendations for four underutilized public and quasi-public spaces on the avenue." You can see the 4 locations […]

Myrtle Ave. Parking Spot Becomes a Park and Classroom

By Aaron Naparstek |
The first round of Park(ing) Day photos are coming in. Here is a public space reclamation project currently underway on Myrtle Avenue in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn. Blaise Backer, executive director of the Myrtle Avenue Brooklyn Partnership explains: A Pratt Institute Industrial Design class is holding class in the space from 9:30 to 12:30, getting feedback […]

Seeing Myrtle Avenue With Fresh Eyes

By Sarah Goodyear |
The folks over at the Myrtle Avenue Brooklyn Partnership have unveiled the results of a collaboration with the Project for Public Spaces (PPS) undertaken over the last couple of years. Two public workshops were held to get community input on the plans, which address four different areas of Myrtle Avenue, one of the main commercial […]

DOT Rolls Out Fort Greene Bike Lanes & Traffic-Calming

By Aaron Naparstek |
Via Brownstoner, the Department of Transportation is building out a nice street redesign project in Brooklyn right now as a part of its Ft. Greene Bike Lane & Traffic Calming Project (download a project description here). Formerly a 70-foot-wide one-way street, Carlton Avenue, above, has been converted to two-way operation with five-foot bike lanes on […]