The corner of Washington and Water in DUMBO, where the old warehouse street runs down to the East River and the Manhattan Bridge tower stands at the end of it with the Empire State Building caught between its legs. Trains rumble across overhead, Jane's Carousel turns in its glass box at the water, and somebody is always in the middle of the cobbles taking the picture. The New Yorkers hang on the brick under the old loading dock canopies, where a gallery in this neighbourhood would hang them.
The acronym DUMBO, Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass, arose in 1978, coined by new residents who believed such an unattractive name would help deter developers. The view of the Manhattan Bridge looking north from the corner of Washington Street and Water Street has become an iconic image. The cardboard box was invented in the Robert Gair building on Washington Street, and the area was long known as Gairsville. The Jay Street Connecting Railroad ran here from around 1904 until 1957. The DUMBO Historic District was listed on the National Register on September 22, 2000, and designated the city's 90th historic district on December 18, 2007. The Manhattan Bridge, designed by Leon Moisseiff, opened on December 31, 1909, with a main span of 1,480 feet, and carries the B, D, N and Q trains. Jane's Carousel, built in 1922 by the Philadelphia Toboggan Company for Idora Park in Youngstown, Ohio, was bought by Jane and David Walentas in 1984 and opened in Brooklyn Bridge Park on September 16, 2011, in a pavilion by Jean Nouvel.
Source · DUMBO, Brooklyn, Wikipedia ↗
The Belgian block cobbles with the old Jay Street rails, red brick warehouse lofts with arched windows and steel canopies on both sides, the blue steel Manhattan Bridge tower and its trussed deck, B D N and Q trains crossing, the Empire State Building framed in the gap, Jane's Carousel in its Jean Nouvel pavilion, Brooklyn Bridge Park, the East River, the Brooklyn Bridge to the west and the photographers in the street. Mood: everybody stops for the same picture. Everything is procedural geometry with painted surfaces; nothing is a scan or a photograph. The room is an interpretation, and it hangs the New Yorkers the census recorded at this place first.