Opened in 2018 on the former Domino Sugar Refinery site, James Corner Field Operations' 5-acre design wove more than 30 salvaged relics into the park, including four 36-foot syrup tanks and 21 original Raw Sugar Warehouse columns along an elevated Artifact Walk.
The L train's Bedford Avenue stop and the NYC Ferry's Williamsburg landings both put you a short walk from the entrance, and the paved esplanade holds a dog run and beach volleyball courts that make it busiest on warm-weather afternoons.
Havemeyers & Elder began refining sugar at Kent Avenue in 1856, and by 1881 the works handled roughly three-quarters of all the sugar refined in the United States. Fire destroyed it on January 8, 1882; the replacement Pan, Filter and Finishing House — the brick block with the 155-foot chimney that still stands behind the park — was up by 1883. The firm became the American Sugar Refining Company in 1891, employed more than 4,500 people at its 1919 peak, and stopped refining in 2004. The Landmarks Preservation Commission designated the surviving building in 2007, Two Trees Management bought the eleven-acre site in 2012 and began redeveloping it in 2014; the park opened on June 10, 2018.
The salvage is the point. James Corner Field Operations spent years cataloging what could be kept, and the park is organized around the results: four syrup tanks, thirty-six feet tall, that collected syrup drawn off during refining; bucket and screw conveyors; a hoist bridge; and the eighty-foot gantry cranes that lifted raw sugar off barges, their crane tracks now serving as planting beds. Twenty-one columns rescued from the Raw Sugar Warehouse carry a 450-foot elevated walkway along that warehouse's own footprint, a deliberate echo of the catwalks that once linked the refinery buildings.
The ground underneath was rebuilt as well. The park deck sits above the federal flood elevation for the site, a decision taken after Hurricane Sandy flooded this shore in 2012, so the esplanade steps down toward the water rather than meeting it flush.
It is a quarter mile long and five acres, which is small; the density of surviving hardware is what carries it. Walk north to south and the Williamsburg Bridge grows in front of you. The elevated walk at the north end is where the site still reads as a factory rather than a lawn.
15 River St, Brooklyn, NY 11249 · Official site ↗
Domino Park is a 5-acre (2.0 ha) public park in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York City. It spans a quarter mile along the East River near the Williamsburg Bridge, at the Domino Sugar Refinery site. Along the five-block riverside walk, various salvaged factory equipment is displayed, including four syrup collection tanks, that pay tribute to the history of the Domino Sugar Refinery.
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