Book Ends

Brooklyn parks have everything from water features in the summertime, swing sets to ride high in, bridges to cross, jungle gyms to climb and now, Brooklyn's JJ Byrne Park (on 5th Ave between 3rd and 4th St), can add books for reading to it's repertoire.  On Saturday, September 8th,  JJ Byrne welcomed 100 Story House to their playground. 100 Story House is an interactive art installation designed by Julia Marchesi and Leon Reid, that allow readers to open the windows of this miniature Brooklyn brownstone replica and take home a book from it's shelves while giving one in its place (all on the honor system, of course). It is located directly in front of the Old Stone house and will be there until October 26, 2012.   Today, Bebe Bird and I came across this unique installation during one of our daily playground romps and were very excited to learn the concept.  Bebe Bird even found a good read from his "How Do Dinosaur.." series. A lucky day indeed.

Leon, a public artist, took Julia's, a documentary film producer's, vision of creating a space for books to be shared amongst the community and "Brooklynized" it.  This is the first book sharing project and interactive art installation the duo has done. "Kids are of course drawn to a miniature house and then hopefully their parents will see that there are books for them, too. I'm hoping the neighborhood will really embrace it and use it to the fullest extent --- keeping it stocked with books others will want and keeping it in one piece." said Julia.

There's a plaque located on the side of the house with instructions for the curious on how it all works:

You May:

• Remove books from house
• Place books inside house
• Keep the book you remove from house.  

Do Not: 

• Place anything other than books inside the house
• Place books you want returned to you
• Place pornographic/hateful content inside house
• Force books inside house
• Leave books outside house
• Let children climb or use house as a play object 

So, next time you are in the Slope stop over and unload some of your old reads and pick up some fancy new ones!  They're free!  If nothing else you'll appreciate this cool work of art.