Posted on Sun, Jul. 06, 2008

New York, the city of wonders, now has everything: waterfalls! Four waterfalls conceived by Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson debuted on June 26 in New York harbor where they will be part of the landscape until Oct. 13.

How do you concoct waterfalls in an essentially flat terrain? Snag the mayor's attention and acquiescence, raise $15.5 million, get 30 permits from city agencies, erect some tubular, industrial scaffolding and barriers so that small boats don't get sucked into the cascades, filter the water to protect the fish from a joy ride and pump 35,000 gallons of water into the air every minute.

The effect of this public art project, commissioned by the Public Art Fund, is like that of a giant cocktail shaker: It is mixing together people whose paths normally wouldn't cross.

GO WITH THE FLOW

From that perspective, the waterfalls are already an unequivocal success. People from Manhattan's Upper East Side to the borough of Queens and far beyond the city itself are venturing to Lower Manhattan just to see this phenomenon. Since the lines to board harbor cruises can be long, they have ended up chatting with each other.

But what New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg hopes for is tourism dollars comparable to the $55 million that filled the city's coffers in 2005 when Christo and Jeanne-Claude erected The Gates in Central Park.

The waterfalls, which range in height from 90 to 120 feet, are located on the Brooklyn side of the Brooklyn Bridge, the Brooklyn piers between Piers 4 and 5, in Lower Manhattan at Pier 35 north of the Manhattan Bridge and on the north side of Governors Island, in the middle of New York harbor.

They are turned on daily at 7 a.m. and turned off at 10 p.m. except for Tuesdays and Thursdays, when the show starts at 9 a.m. After sunset they are illuminated.

''I want to focus on the waterfall as a spectacle, operating on a grand and impressive scale, while also offering an intimate and intellectually challenging experience to the people visiting the sites along the waterfront,'' said artist Eliasson in a statement from the Public Art Fund.

THE CRITICS

That grand vision isn't always shared by those who see them. ''I guess, if you can't see falls in the area you're in, they're pretty,'' said Debbie Marshall of Booneville, Ind. after taking a spin around New York harbor on a Circle Line Downtown boat -- the official cruise company for the waterfalls. ``I was expecting them to be bigger because I'm used to natural falls, I guess.''

Another visitor was from Buffalo. ''We have Niagara Falls,'' he said with a shrug, as he nevertheless whipped out his cellphone camera to take a picture of the waterfall under the Brooklyn Bridge. But, he added, he was having a great time. It had poured right before he got on the boat, but then the rain had stopped, and a complete rainbow arced over the Brooklyn Bridge.

Natalie Greer, a junior at Ball State University in Muncie, Ind., working in New York this summer, also liked the boat trip. ''When you're in the city, you don't get to see everything as a whole,'' she said. ``It's just, you know, towers. But once you get out on the water you can see how close the buildings are together and it's unreal that you're actually in there. It's a totally different view from outside.''

In a recording played on the Circle Line Downtown harbor cruises, Eliasson says, ``The journey itself is something that I would claim is part of the project. It's a part of the artwork.''

And that's the point. The Circle Line boat, for instance (the one that leaves from 42nd Street in midtown Manhattan), takes passengers around the island of Manhattan. It goes by the waterfalls, of course, but it also goes by Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty, Castle Williams on Governors Island (a fort built as harbor defense just before the War of 1812), the old factories and warehouses of Brooklyn, the picturesque ruins of the 19th century smallpox hospital on Roosevelt Island, nesting cormorants, the mayoral residence, Gracie Mansion, the bucolic northern end of Manhattan, the impressive span of the George Washington Bridge.

The waterfalls spur tourists and locals alike to take to the water, grab a bicycle or simply set out on subway and foot to explore New York City's many layers, and to linger and shop and eat in neighborhoods they may not have visited before.

Both the mayor and the artist should be pleased.