Material #51: Handball in NYC

Material on many levels

The handball court in Riverbank State Park, featured in the StoryMap “New York’s Home Courts - A Spatial Analysis of Handball”

This week’s example of the word “material” in use comes from a beautiful StoryMap project about New York City’s handball courts, by Isabel Ozkan Jordan: “New York’s Home Courts - A Spatial Analysis of Handball”.

She writes:

“With simple equipment and a flexible, utilitarian architecture, handball courts are sculptures of urbanist realism that serve as monuments to material and spatial efficiency…

…handball is a unique and spontaneous dance set against stark geometric backdrops, textured paint, and timeworn concrete.

Introduced to New York by Irish immigrants in the 19th century, and cemented in relevance by the Work Project Administration's widespread construction of public courts during the Great Depression, the sport is intertwined with a thoroughly working-class urban identity…”

The StoryMap shares a short history of the courts, snapshots of courts in action, and statistical analysis of how their presence across the city correlates with factors like social vulnerability and heat. (And Jordan notes the links between those two factors: “researchers cannot determine a neighborhood's vulnerability to extreme heat, extreme weather events, and other climate change-related risks without the incorporation of social factors.”)

It closes with an interactive map of the courts across the city. I zoomed in on my neighborhood and sure enough there are the courts in what my kids used to call the “Ninja Park”, behind a big school building in Queens.

Screenshot from “Map 5 - Interactive map of handball courts across New York”

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Through 2024, It’s Material is sharing one use of the word “material” each week, on Tuesdays (sometimes Thursdays!)

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