Tiny Bed-Stuy sidewalk aquarium paved over by city may be rebuilt at community garden: officials
City workers paved over the Bed-Stuy Aquarium on Hancock St. near Tompkins Ave. early Friday morning. All that was left was one dead goldfish nearby.
It was a goldfish funeral for the ages.
Creative Brooklynites who turned a broken piece of sidewalk surrounding a leaking fire hydrant into a tiny aquarium, captivating residents citywide, are mourning the city’s move to have the neighborhood treasure paved over.
Votive candles and flowers were laid down next to a recently poured concrete slab now covering what was once known as the “Bed-Stuy Aquarium” on Saturday, as fans wished they had one more day to look upon the goldfish which once swam there.
“It’s gone! The fishes are gone, Mama!” a 2-year-old girl cried out to her mother pushing her on a stroller along Hancock St. near Tompkins Ave.
Mom Jasmin German didn’t know what to say in response as her daughter started to cry.
“I’m shocked,” German, 33, told the Daily News. “We came to see the fishes.”
City workers unceremoniously paved over the aquarium at around 4 a.m. Friday, outraged neighbors said. The aquarium was nothing more than a small, inch-and-a-half-deep pool filled with goldfish on a broken piece of sidewalk under a leaking fire hydrant.
But the tiny pool quickly became a neighborhood attraction and, since the summer, people from all over the city have shown up to admire the fish and help build out the small concrete crater.
The aquarium became so popular it could be found on Google Maps. Fans were even able to Venmo money for fish food and decorations.
Its disappearance caught many in the area off guard Saturday, when all that was left was one dead fish a few inches from the buried urban aquarium.
“This looks like a memorial,” Brooklyn resident Kelvin Ukpebor, 38, said. “It looks like bye-bye to the fish.”
Before the city intervened, Ukpebor used to enjoy walking by the aquarium.
“It just adds to the aesthetic of the neighborhood,” he said, “as a point of interest, as a place to come and visit. After breakfast, you could go see the fishes!”
During the summer, Bedford-Stuyvesant resident Hajj-Malik Lovick, 47, said he and some friends looked at the leaking hydrant and decided to reinvent the puddle below it as an aquarium.
“It was like a condemned Johnny pump. Why not make it better than leaving things that look broken? Why not fix it?” Lovick said in an interview with the Daily News over the summer, as he sat in a lawn chair guarding the pond.
But news stories and videos of the aquarium circulated on social media drawing the attention of animal-rights advocates and city officials, who claimed concern that the fish would not survive in the shallow pool under the hydrant.
Officials said the Bed-Stuy Aquarium would not last, and that both the hydrant and sidewalk would need to be repaired. The city’s Department of Environmental Protection workers shut the hydrant off several times, only to find someone kept turning it back, officials said.
The city said the goldfish wouldn’t survive the winter months. But the aquarium’s supporters were working on a solution, Aryanna Karoon, 22, said.
“They were going to bring heating lamps for the winter,” she explained. “Solar panel heating lamps.”
But on Tuesday, the FDNY repaired the hydrant and installed a lock to prevent it from leaking further. The move killed several goldfish, which were quickly replaced.
Then, on Friday, the fish eviction began. City workers put the surviving fish in a bucket as they filled the small sidewalk aquatic oasis with dull, gray concrete.
“This allows us to keep New Yorkers safe by ensuring that the previously leaking fire hydrant doesn’t freeze over and become inoperable,” a DEP spokesman said about the aquarium’s removal Friday.
Fresh concrete “has been poured to ensure pedestrian safety,” the spokesman said.
Acknowledging the creativity behind the aquarium, the city is “working with community members to find an appropriate alternative location for this impromptu gem, including in a community garden half a block away,” the spokesman said.
Further plans about the aquarium’s future were not disclosed.
No matter what the city does, it won’t be able to bring back the magic a few Bed-Stuy residents made with a broken sidewalk and busted fireplug.
“It used to be really lively [here],” said Jonathan Ivan, 31, who lives across the street from the former sidewalk aquarium. “People would come here on their break. Just hang out by the fish.”
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