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September 18, 2009
Hey, you, spot the wild boar on that building!
The Brooklyn Paper
by Wendy Ponte
Isabel Hill, whose documentary Brooklyn Matters has been a clarion call for opponents of Bruce Ratner's Atlantic Yards, has now added children's book author to her impressive resumé.
Who knew there was a wild boar residing on Garfield Place? It just doesn’t seem like the place for such a beast — or maybe it does.
The wild boar, and dozens of other animals, populate lots of Brooklyn neighborhoods — and that’s the point behind architectural historian Isabel Hill’s new picture book for children, “Urban Animals,” which was published by Star Bright Books on Sept. 9.
...Developing an awareness of building details causes children, and adults as well, to take pride in their communities, and when that happens, Hill said, people become committed to their neighborhoods and want to preserve whatever is special about them.
Hill has made a career out of appreciating the details of architecture. Originally trained as a historic preservationist, her diverse job history includes working for the American Building Survey in National Parks, being a city planner in Greenpoint and Williamsburg, and even standing hundreds of feet in the air on a scaffold in the middle of New York Harbor photographing the Statue of Liberty during her last restoration in 1986.
In Brooklyn, Hill is best known for her filmmaking. Her first documentary, “Made in Brooklyn,” explored manufacturing in Brooklyn and her second, “Brooklyn Matters,” focused a laser beam on the controversial Atlantic Yards project. Yet another, still in planning, will explore public housing.
Posted by eric at September 18, 2009 4:17 PM