GROWHOUSE
the CORRIDOR
Illuminating
Black History
Light at the Crossroads
of History & Space
A temporary public art installation, a community archive, four augmented reality monuments, and six workshops that return 400 years of Black history to the street where it lives.
PROJECT GOALS
In time for the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States and the 400 year anniversary of the first Africans brought to Dutch New Amsterdam, GrowHouse’s SBS Lighting Project - the CORRIDOR - reimagines what it means to commemorate place, memory, and belonging.
Rather than marking this milestone through traditional monuments, we’re illuminating the histories that are often forgotten, obscured, or erased - the stories of Black life, creativity, and resilience that have always shaped Brooklyn’s landscape.
In addition to its symbolic goals, the SBS Lighting Project aims to create safety and beauty along Malcolm X Boulevard through creative lighting installations that activate NYC DEP rain gardens, NYC DOT signage, and NYC Parks tree pits.
The design will be community-built, easily replicable, maintained, and integrated into a larger ecosystem of GrowHouse’s placemaking and design interventions.
The History
We Are Illuminating
Four centuries of Black life, labor, and resistance on this land. Each era shapes what goes on the panels. Each era becomes an AR monument on the corridor.
-
Lenape territory. Dutch colonial New Amsterdam. The first enslaved Africans. The names were erased. The labor remains in the soil.
The land now known as Bed-Stuy is Lenape territory. By 1626, the Dutch West India Company had brought the first enslaved Africans to New Amsterdam. Some of the earliest free Black landowners in the Americas lived nearby in a settlement the Dutch called the Land of the Blacks. Brooklyn's farmland was worked by enslaved people through this entire period.
-
Kings County had more enslaved people than any other county in the north. Freedom was gradual for everyone except the ones waiting.
The British consolidated slavery in New York. Black New Yorkers fought on both sides of the Revolutionary War seeking freedom. The Gradual Emancipation Act of 1799 freed no one immediately, binding children born to enslaved mothers to decades more of servitude. Freedom was gradual for everyone except the ones waiting.
-
New York abolished slavery in 1827. Black Brooklyn grew. Weeksville was built on purpose. The neighborhood we know began to take shape.
Weeksville, a free Black community founded in 1838 just east of this corridor, became an anchor of Black self-determination. The Great Migration brought Black families from the South into Brooklyn's changing neighborhoods.
By the 1920s, Bed-Stuy was becoming one of the most significant Black communities in the country. The neighborhood wasn't always here. People built it on purpose.
-
Bed-Stuy produced artists, activists, athletes. The Billie Holiday Theatre. Hip hop. Four hundred years of people refusing to leave.
The Billie Holiday Theatre opened on Fulton Street in 1972, anchoring Black arts through decades of disinvestment.
Malcolm X organized in this borough. Through redlining, urban renewal, the crack epidemic, and gentrification, Black residents have fought to remain - and we have. This corridor is the result of 400 years of people refusing to leave.
A BEACON
The Design
Prepared by Andrea Steele Architecture with SITU, Light Essence Design, and ARUP.
Three (3) columns create an “X” when viewed from a slight distance. Upon closer inspection, the form is created by 2 foot by 2 foot structures made of acrylic, light, and metal. Warm toned light emanates a glow that gently lights the plaza and the elements engraved or enshrined within the structure.
Height: 10 feet
NOTE: These renderings show the form of the lighting structure, NOT the content. The content will be developed by community.
The Thinking Behind It
What this design is responding to:
Community members wanting the installation to feel warm, not cold or industrial. This beacon uses amber light tones and organic forms to reflect that.
What it references:
The form echoes the X symbol, an important form in Kongo cosmology and the basis for the dikenga, the Kongo cosmogram which represents the cyclical nature of life and time.
It also symbolizes Malcolm X, and the surname X adopted by members of the Nation of Islam as a rejection of the surnames of those who enslaved our ancestors.
Finally, it’s a play on “X marks the Spot” or the crossroads - this intersection of Malcolm X Blvd and Harriet Tubman Avenue (aka Fulton Street) is a major crossroads for Black Brooklyn, literally and metaphorically.
April - June 2026
The Workshop Series
Every session generates content that goes directly onto the installation.
May 20 | 6:30 - 8:30 PM | In-Person · GrowHouse and Local Sites
Workshop 3: Candlelight History Walk
On the evening of May 20th - one day after Malcolm X's birthday - GrowHouse's Illuminating Black History Project invites you to walk Malcolm X Boulevard and Marcus Garvey Boulevard as a timeline.
From Pinkster celebrations to Dr. English's mansion to the movements that named these blocks after two of the most radical thinkers in Black history - this corridor has been holding memory longer than most people know. We're bringing it forward.
Lead: Shanna Sabio
RSVP: here
We’re planning even more engagements - stay tuned.
moodboard
Interplays between shadow and light like Kara Walker and Deb Willis
Naming the unnamed
Rooted in Black cultural symbolism like Carrie Mae Weems and Rashid Johnson
Intricacy and craftsman ship of African artisans
Texture of African and African Diasporic materials
Sculpted and gilded like Barbara Chase-Riboud
- honoring Black history and culture
- reclaiming Black spaces in the face of gentrification
- honoring Black history and culture - reclaiming Black spaces in the face of gentrification
safety -
functional beauty -
cultural resonance -
safety - functional beauty - cultural resonance -
- ancestral stewardship - co-design - ecological integrity - anti-extractive process
- ancestral stewardship - co-design - ecological integrity - anti-extractive process
LOCATION MAP AND CALENDAR OF EVENTS COMING SOON
Key dates
July 21, 2025: Call for Design and Lighting Teams Opens
August 15, 2025: Submission Deadline at 11:59pm ET
August 25-26, 2025: Design Team Interviews
September 1, 2025: Design Team Notifications
September 8-12, 2025: Project Onboarding
September 2025 – June 2026: Project Implementation (Community Engagement, Design, Installation)
June 30, 2026: Project completed, including reflections and reports
