Lowline

The Lowline, formerly known as the Delancey Underground, is a proposal for the world's first underground park in the New York City borough of Manhattan that would be located under the eastbound roadway of Delancey Street on the Lower East Side, in the former Williamsburg Bridge Trolley Terminal adjacent to the Essex Street station. Co-founders James Ramsey and Dan Barasch have suggested natural light would be directed below ground using a system that has been described in the proposed plan as "remote skylights", providing an area in which trees and grass could be grown beneath city streets. Light collectors would be placed at ground level or on surrounding rooftops, with suggested locations, including the median on Delancey Street. Artificial lighting would be used to supplement the redirected sunlight on cloudy days and at night. The area, with ceilings high, extends three blocks east from Essex Street to Clinton Street and was used until 1948 as a station and balloon loop for streetcars crossing the Williamsburg Bridge to and from Brooklyn. R. Boykin Curry IV is the third urban entrepreneur behind the proposal.