Little Island: When the River Raised a Garden and Humanity Reclaimed the Sky

The narrator, an architect who knows how a load descends into foundations, sees foundations lift a dream at Little Island, a garden standing in the Hudson off Manhattan's West Side, small on the map and vast in its capacity for wonder. Before the garden the water had a memory: the Lenape fished and traded on these shores, survivors of the Titanic came ashore at the neighboring pier, the Lusitania sailed from it, a steel arch of the old Cunard-White Star building still stands, and the pier later became a refuge for New York's LGBTQ community before Hurricane Sandy damaged it. Most of the funding for its revival came from the Diller-von Furstenberg Family Foundation, with design by Thomas Heatherwick's studio, landscape by Signe Nielsen and MNLA and engineering by Arup, and concrete structures with crowns like tulip cups, inspired by the old wooden piles, now carry soil, paths and trees on piles reaching deep rock. The book follows the concrete petals floated down the Hudson on barges, the trees, shrubs and flowering bulbs spread across small microclimates, the old piles kept as habitat for aquatic life, and the open-air amphitheater and smaller glade where music, dance and theater meet the river. It closes with practical notes for visitors and with the narrator searching for ground where a person has room to live, even if he must lift it above the water.