Quassaick Creek a Greenway In the Making

Newburgh, N.Y.

For Immediate Release:

Quassaick Creek: A Greenway in the Making” at the Newburgh Free Library (124 Grand St, Newburgh, New York 12550) will open on January 31 st at 5 pm.

The exhibition is organized by the Quassaick Creek Watershed Alliance and the Hudson Valley Initiative at Columbia University GSAPP and will feature work produced by students in the Master of Architecture Program.

Founded in 1990, the Quassaick Creek Watershed Alliance is a volunteer-based advocacy group that seeks to involve individuals and entities, both public and private, as advocates for the development and implementation of a Quassaick Creek Watershed Plan. The

Hudson Valley Initiative (HVI) is a community design initiative based at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP).

A far view of the Holden Dam. Columbia Architecture Student and the Newburgh Quassaick Creek Alliance have envisioned a nature center located near the dam.

The architectural proposals for a Nature Center at the soon to be breached Holden Dam were led by Professor Robert Marino in the spring of 2019. The dam will be converted into a weir for better erosion control and to restore the ecology of the creek.

Students experimented with ways in which a nature center can inform the reconfigured site. The exhibition will be open to the public through the month of February during opening hours of the library and will offer space for comments and conversation about the future of the creek as a public amenity.

A Columbia Architecture GSAPP HVI cohort reimagined the Quassaick Creek in this schematic showing it enhanced by a Nature Museum.

The student projects and the exhibition are part of Columbia University’s ongoing commitment to the Hudson Valley and the City of Newburgh. Since 2014, more than 250 students from GSAPP have been working in and about Newburgh.

The work ranges from urban design visions, documentary videos, reports, and concrete architectural design proposals.

In 2017, GSAPP expanded its commitment by founding HVI in order to pick up where student ideas leave off.

Through the initiative, faculty and students continue to engage with the communities they learn from past their semester-based curriculum, convene meetings, facilitate projects, host workshops or help develop design visions.

This exhibition is part of this commitment and it is hoped that it will draw greater attention to the work of the Quassaick Creek Alliance and its advocacy for a public trail and recreation opportunities along the creek.