8. Domino Park contains vestiges from the Domino Sugar Refinery
The Wythe Hotel isn’t the only example of a former factory being transformed — Domino Park and the surrounding complex of condos, retail shops, and restaurants was once the Domino Sugar Refinery. Opened in 1856, it was once the world’s largest and most productive sugar refinery, at one point producing up to 98% of the sugar consumed in the United States. Though industrial production in Williamsburg began declining in the 1950s and ’60s, the Domino Sugar Refinery held out as the last major active industrial operation on the waterfront. It finally closed in 2004 and sat abandoned for 14 years.
Domino Park opened in 2018 as part of a massive real estate development by Two Trees Management, who hired James Corner Field Operations (one of the landscape designers behind the High Line in the Meatpacking District and Chelsea) to create a privately owned publicly accessible park that would restore waterfront access to New Yorkers. The park incorporates industrial relics of the Domino Sugar Refinery, including teal gantry cranes, 21 original columns from the sugar warehouse, seating steps made with wood reclaimed from the refinery, and old syrup tanks.
