Updated 10/10/2009 03:26 PM
Unique City Buildings Open To Public This Weekend
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This weekend, about 200 rarely-seen buildings are open to the public, thanks to the seventh annual Open House New York program.
One hidden gem visitors can visit is the Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, seen above.
The futuristic egg-like structures of the Department of Environmental Protection's largest treatment plant are called "digester eggs." They treat 300 million gallons of wastewater from Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens every day and turn solids into fertilizer.
"There are many different stations and processes associated with it, and when the the wastewater gets treated and returned to the New York Harbor 80 to 90 percent of what was in the water when it came in has been removed," says DEP Acting Commissioner Steven Lawitts.
The wastewater treatment plant can be seen from the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and Long Island Expressway, and has been featured in several movies.
"I drive by it at night and so the design seemed intriguing," says visitor Daniel Jordan.
DEP officials say they gave the facility an interesting design to make it a part of the community.
"We thought it was important when we were designing this plant to make it beautiful, to make it part of the community and to include a visitors' center so that the community and the facility could interact," says DEP Acting Commissioner Steven Lawitts. "Our predecessors designed the water structures to last for 100 years or longer and we wanted an especially striking design, one that will continue to be interesting 100 years from now."
At all the open sites, people can enjoy tours, talks, performances and lots of family activities.
"We have infrastructure facilities such as Newtown, we have private homes, we have a great children's festival going on at the Center For Architecture, the Masonic Lodge, Chrysler Building," says President Caroline Otto of Open House New York. "So some great historic monuments from New York City."
To learn more about Newtown or other Open House sites around the city, visit www.ohny.org.