“Are we a nation of states? “What’s the state of our nation?”
Lin-Manuel Miranda, Hamilton

In this time of division across our nation we must build bridges across our communities. Bellport, New York, on Long Island’s south shore is just such a community. In the two places that are Bellport —Bellport Village and North Bellport—the gaping social, racial and economic chasm that runs along their shared border at Head of the Neck Road, a virtual DMZ, demands such a bridge. A Bellport artist organization entitled Auto-Body asked PAU and other architects with local presence to submit visions for what could become of a recently built but now defunct beach pavilion, which was reconstructed with Federal Superstorm Sandy recovery funds. Soon after the new pavilion was constructed, shifting sands left the pavilion in the ocean at high tide, forcing its abandonment and begging the question of what should become of it.

Sublimely beautiful due to its purposeful lack of architecture, Bellport’s beach does not need a pavilion of any sort, regardless of design. The truth is that most who are privileged enough to live in the Village need very little; folks can bring umbrellas if they need shade. But in North Bellport are Bellport Village’s diverse neighbors—neighbors who are excluded from the beach—neighbors with seemingly profound needs, needs for opportunity, needs for recognition, needs for a new conversation about the past, present and future of this divide.

Our proposal contemplates a gesture of reconciliation between Bellport Village and North Bellport, should they both want it, by reimagining as a new hub the Bellport LIRR station, a place that today serves the entire area poorly. Our proposal asserts that the derelict state of the existing station fully embodies the distressed state of the nation. Bellport Station quietly screams: we don’t care about public infrastructure, we don’t care about the surrounding community of North Bellport.