Wall Street Getting Security Makeover

 by Barry Owens

Wall Street. Its very name is rooted in the fear of attack, derived from the high stockade that Dutch settlers built to repel a British invasion. Now, more than three centuries later, security is no less a worry on The Street. But the protective barriers that are about to go up are very much 21st-century high-tech.
 
At Wall Street and Broadway and other intersections, retractable steel posts and bronzed boulder-like sculptures will replace planters and pickup trucks to block vehicle access. ROGERS MARVEL ARCHITECTS/THE TRIBECA TRIB

In the next few month, the concrete planters and pickup trucks that have served to keep vehicles off Wall and Broad streets since Sept. 11 will be replaced with automated barricades, heavy bronzed boulder-like sculptures and retractable steel posts.

New streetscape security devices will be installed along Broad Street. The boulders, designed to stand little more than knee-high, will weigh in the thousands of pounds. Because of their density, they meet force resistance requirements of the NYPD without having to be anchored to the street.

The street bed will be raised to curb level, using cobblestone-like paving blocks, and will be accessible to pedestrians only.

In addition, hydraulic barricades that can be raised remotely by security guards will be installed at the intersections of Pine and Nassau, Wall

and William, Exchange Place and William, Broad and Beaver, and New and Beaver streets.Steel posts will be built into the street at the intersections of Broadway and Wall and Broadway and Exchange Place, closing off access to non-emergency vehicles. The posts can be lowered or raised by security guards.

Sidewalk barriers and street furniture are designed, planners say, to make the area both more secure and more pedestrian-friendly. Cobbles will be laid on Broad Street in front of the Stock Exchange. ROGERS MARVEL ARCHITECTS/THE TRIBECA TRIB

The security devices were designed by Rogers Marvel Architects of Tribeca with an eye toward meeting force resistance standards while at the same time being unobtrusive in design.

"We don't see the two as being mutually exclusive," said Vishaan Chakrabarti, director of the City Planning Department's Manhattan office. Chakrabarti presented the designs to the city's Landmarks Preservation Commission, which unanimously approved them on Feb. 24.

"This is such a marked and commendable improvement," said Julie Menin, president of Wall Street Rising, who said the current security measures were disasterous to area businesses and were a factor in the demise of the Regent Wall Street hotel.

The installation of the boulders and bollards could be only the first phase of new safety measures and could serve as a worldwide model of security as art, said Stefan Pryor, chief of staff for the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation.

"This is in some ways only the beginning of our efforts," Pryor said.

Rogers Marvel Architects has also designed a transparent blast shield that could be installed outside the Stock Exchange as well as a fountain and other sculptural streetscape barriers. But Prior said those designs are only conceptual at this point and he couldn't say when or if they would be implemented.