The Paradox Of DUMBO

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun

Ah, New York: where neighborhoods change practically overnight, and one person’s shiny new “street of dreams” is another person’s funeral march.

In DUMBO this weekend, the 10th annual Art Under the Bridge Festival will showcase many such contradictions. Friday at noon, at 65 Water St., a 1922 carousel painstakingly restored by Jane Walentas — the wife of David Walentas, who through his firm Two Trees Management owns 13 buildings in of the neighborhood — will open to the public (for viewing only, no rides). The carousel is a beautiful ornament on an already delectable stretch of Water St., which includes Jacques Torres Chocolate and the French bakery Almondine, not to mention the River Café at the end of the street.(Ms. Walentas referred to this as the “street of dreams.”)

But some find the neighborhood’s changes hard to swallow, no matter how tasty a package they come in. So on Saturday at noon, three blocks away, at 155 Water St., artists displaced by the neighborhood’s transformation into luxury real estate will hold a New Orleans-style funeral march, called, without irony, “Death of DUMBO.” It will be followed by “a day of music and remembrance,” as it is described on www.deathofdumbo.com. Would-be-mourners are directed to the loading dock of Foragers Market, a gourmet prepared-foods shop that opened earlier this year.

In some ways, the story of artists in DUMBO is a typical New York story: Artists move into a blighted –– or, in this case, largely empty –– neighborhood and lend it some glamour; then real estate values go up, and most of them are priced out. But in other ways, DUMBO has followed an unusual path, since such huge chunks of the neighborhood are owned by Mr. Walentas, who along with his wife takes a strong interest in art. As real estate values rise –– the most expensive apartment ever sold in the neighborhood was purchased earlier this month for $3.3 million ––Mr. Walentas has ensured that art has a continuing presence, by giving preferential rents to galleries and donating space to several nonprofit groups, like the d.u.m.b.o. arts center, which organizes the festival; Triangle Arts Association; Smack Mellon Gallery; St. Ann’s Warehouse, and Cabinet Magazine. Two Trees Management also plays a central role in the festival, offering its elevators and lobbies for site-specific artworks, and its loading docks for performances.

In other words, art isn’t dead in DUMBO and, if the Walentases have their way, never will be. But it has the status of one amenity among many: nice restaurants, nice stores, nice galleries. In terms of artists’ studios, it’s the kind of artists who work here that’s changed, said the Two Trees leasing agent, Chris Havens. Don’t expect to find any starving ones.

“We like painter tenants,” Mr. Havens said, “but they need to be able to pay rent, which means they’re selling art. That’s who pays a thousand bucks, two thousand bucks, three thousand bucks for studio space.”

The changes in the neighborhood leave the people behind the festival in a slightly funny position. The festival wouldn’t exist without Two Trees’ Support, or at least, it would be very different. “It’s a total collaboration,” the executive director of the d.u.m.b.o. arts center, Breda Kennedy, said. But the festival also includes a screening of a documentary called “Between the Bridges,” which credits artists with having colonized the neighborhood and then lured the gentrifiers.

Some artists acknowledge the fallacy of believing that they made DUMBO valuable. One of the founders of the festival and the d.u.m.b.o. arts center, Rodney Allen Trice, said he remembers fierce debates in the early years about whether the festival was good for the arts community or not. Would it establish the artists as a force to be reckoned with in the neighborhood or simply draw attention to the area –– attention that would necessarily lead to further development?

Looking back, Mr. Trice said, “There was a bit of naïveté in the idea that we could influence the community as strongly as we thought was could.” Today, he added, “It’s a hot piece of real estate, with views like nowhere else. Forget it.”

Although Ms. Kennedy described the artist population in DUMBO as “hemorrhaging,” there are still a substantial number of artists with studios there. Around 200 artists are opening their studios on Saturday and Sunday as part of the festival, and the associate director of the d.u.m.b.o. arts center, Chris Herbeck, estimated that there are about twice that many artist studios in the neighborhood.

Those who tell doomsday stories of artists being forced out tend to focus their ire not on Two Trees, but on the other major landlord in the neighborhood, Joshua Guttman, who gained some notoriety in May when a group of warehouses he owned in Greenpoint burned down.The Death of DUMBO funeral march is starting at 155 Water St. for a reason: Several artists left livework lofts in the building earlier this year after settling a suit against Mr. Guttman. At 68 Jay St., another of Mr. Guttman’s buildings, artists said he had already cleared out the tenants on the first three floors and was rumored to be working his way up. “Everyone is worried,” said Sono Osato, who has a studio on the fourth floor.

But one of the artists who moved out of 155 Water St., Dan Zeller, said that when he moved to the neighborhood, in 1993, it wasn’t uncommon for bodies to be found dumped near the waterfront. “It went from, I would be scared to walk around at night to, in the last few years, people with their baby strollers and their little poodles,” Mr. Zeller said. “I don’t have any bitterness; it’s sort of the way things work.”

For the arts community that remains, particularly the galleries and nonprofit organizations, the future looks bright. Two Trees recently started a program called First Thursdays, in which galleries in the neighborhood stay open late on the first Thursday of each month, to encourage people to come and check out DUMBO’s art scene. Asked about business, Bill O’Connor, a partner in Wessel + O’Connor Fine Art, one of 15 galleries Two Trees has installed at 111 Front St., said that foot traffic was nothing like Chelsea, of course. “But I had a storefront gallery in Chelsea, and I got tired of people coming in just to get a free Gallery Guide or use the bathroom,” he said. “It’s fun to have an opening and have tons of people, but that doesn’t pay the rent.”

Two of the nonprofits ––Triangle Arts Association and Smack Mellon –– in fact offer free studio space to artists, care of Two Trees. Triangle Arts Association hosts six-month residencies for three artists, as well as a biannual, international artists’ workshop (going on right now, and culminating in open studios on Saturday from 1 to 6). Smack Mellon offers residencies to six artists. Formerly, those have been in space separate from the gallery, but Smack Mellon is about to start a construction, with funds from City Council and the Brooklyn’s borough president’s office, to turn its lower floor, now raw space, into studios.

In the long term, Ms. Walentas said, she and her husband would like to develop the Civil War-era coffee and tea warehouses that run along Water St.and concentrate many of the arts businesses and nonprofit groups there. And Two Trees has given a lease at a preferential rate to the Brooklyn Arts Council, to have its offices and a gallery at 55 Washington St. “They bring people down here; they bring attention,” Mr. Havens said. “They are very connected all over Brooklyn –– not just in the trendy areas –– with the arts community, and that’s important to us.”

As for Ms. Walentas’s carousel, it will remain for the present at 65 Water St. The space will be open Fridays through Sundays from noon to 5 p.m. (Even when it’s closed, the carousel is visible through the glassy façade.) Eventually, she hopes it can be installed in the Brooklyn Bridge Park. “Our plan is to give it to the children of DUMBO,” she said.

Ms. Walentas bought the carousel in 1984,intending it to go in the park, which at that point, Mr. Walentas was assigned to develop.Working alone for many years and then, recently, with a crew of six, she has restored it to its original designs and color palette. “It really looks spectacular,” she said of the results of her 20 years of work. “Even I never imagined that it would be so magnificent.”

Walking down Water St. this afternoon, anyone who remembers the neighborhood from its grittier days might say the same of DUMBO, as well.


The New York Sun

© 2025 The New York Sun Company, LLC. All rights reserved.

Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. The material on this site is protected by copyright law and may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used.

The New York Sun

Sign in or  Create a free account

or
By continuing you agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use