Branch Spotlight: Greenpoint Library and Environmental Education Center

Your Library, Your Planet

Each year we take a moment to celebrate our environment on Earth Day. Our little ones come home from school with plants and ideas for recycling and we think about how our behaviors impact our planet. But now, Brooklyn Public Library has a new branch where every day is Earth Day: The Greenpoint Library and Environmental Education Center (GEEC).  But why is this new branch in Greenpoint?

Greenpoint sits at the confluence of the East River and the Newtown Creek, at the Northwest edge of Brooklyn. In the nineteenth century, Greenpoint became the birthplace of industrialized oil refining. With no environmental laws or regulations created until the latter part of the twentieth century, oil and other manufacturing concerns created one of the worst environmental disasters in U.S. history.  In 1978, authorities would determine what locals long suspected: Greenpoint was sitting on a pool of oil leaked into the soil and groundwater, a spill of 30 million gallons, 50% larger than the famed Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska. This ecological catastrophe destroyed the health of Newtown Creek and nearby waterways, endangered the health of the adjacent communities and created environmental damage that Greenpointers are experiencing to this day.

In 2010, a Greenpoint activist-initiated lawsuit against ExxonMobil for its environmental atrocities was settled with New York State. It included an award of $19.5 million to be invested in the community through environmental projects. Community stakeholders were adamant the monies also create a legacy project for the neighborhood, one that could help right the wrong that had been done in Greenpoint and serve as a place to engage in environmental issues. This new branch, the Greenpoint Library and Environmental Education Center (GEEC) will serve as a hub for environmental community engagement, advocacy and education.

The GEEC provides a locale for BPL to provide robust environmental programming, will afford our patrons opportunities to engage in the environment and the tools for making a change in how our behaviors impact the health of our world. The GEEC will offer workshops for all ages on a variety of topics such as soil cycles, renewable energies, insects, watersheds, birding, composting, mycology, gardening, tree and wildflower identification, household energy efficiency, and textile mending.  

This center is also a place for progressive, environmental acknowledgement and action. We will hold lectures, panels and discussion groups to support environmental action, activism and climate crisis response.  We will host authors and academics putting climate crisis issues at the forefront of their work, highlight local environmental issues and celebrate the activists affording change through their dedication and efforts. 

Inspiring a love of the natural world in our youngest patrons insures we are fostering a generation of environmentally minded citizens. The GEEC will plan environmental education opportunities for our school age children, like a rooftop Demonstration Garden to connect them with plants, encourage dialogue around food sources and seed-to-plant growing cycles. 

The building, designed by Marble Fairbanks with landscape design by SCAPE, exemplifies innovative approaches to sustainable design, and serves as practical learning tool for our community. The GEEC prioritized reducing energy consumption by installing low use bathroom fixtures and appliances, creating a 35% reduction in water usage, and by harnessing the power of the sun through solar panels, offsetting energy costs by 10%. The building also employs a displacement ventilation system which can reduce the GEEC’s energy costs by 38.5% annually.

Starting at the Outdoor Plaza, patrons will find a granite outcropping inspired by the sculpting force and direction of the Laurentide Ice Sheet during the glacial formation and melting retreat that occurred approximately 18,000 years ago. The native grasses, shrubs and trees within this planting area help form a bioswale creating a linear channel designed to slow down rainwater runoff.

On the first floor of the GEEC, one will find adult and children's reading and collection areas as well as the Walnut and Ash meeting rooms. On the second floor, our patrons will discover the Eco Lounge with kiosks for the Greenpoint Environmental History Project, the Red Oak meeting room, the Teen Eco Lab and our two Eco Labs for workshops, which doubles as a large meeting room for programming. The second floor also features our Reading Garden, flush with native plants providing a quiet sanctuary for our patrons and local avian neighbors. Finally, on the third floor our patrons will find the Demonstration and Pollinator Gardens, providing a rooftop locale to learn about the importance of the life and growth cycles of plants and critters.

As a world class library system and trusted community resource, Brooklyn Public Library has the unique opportunity to engage our patrons in climate crisis and pertinent environmental issues. If you love something, you take care of it, and we recognize that a connection to nature has a profound influence on the way people interact with it. This new branch will create opportunities for patrons to feel that relationship.

We can’t wait to see you when it’s safe. Come by and read a book in the Reading Garden, pick some tomatoes in our Demonstration Garden, make a seed bomb in our Eco Lab or listen to your neighbors talk about what we must do to improve our environment and ensure the longevity of our planet. 

Happy Earth Day! 

For continued reading on Greenpoint and the Environment, look at the books on this list.