It’s stubbornly upright, perpetually alert. Mostly it just stands there, waiting to become heroic.
The bollard has become ubiquitous across America’s urban landscapes as part of a broader hardening of public spaces amid the terrorism fears that spiked after Sept. 11. In an era that saw more checkpoints, surveillance cameras and metal barriers, bollards are another embodiment of the security-first attitudes that prevailed.
“The vibe of bollards is urban fortress,” said Michael Benediktsson, an associate professor of sociology at Hunter College who wrote a book about urban objects. “It’s part of this broader militarization of public spaces.”
In New York, they abruptly jut out from the ground, crowding narrow sidewalks. They’ve been installed largely to prevent people from using vehicles as ramming weapons and to keep cars with explosives at a distance from buildings.
If speed bumps are sometimes called “sleeping policemen,” bollards are their insomniac cousins.
They have at times proved necessary. In 2017, a driver sped through the sidewalk in Times Square, injuring 20 pedestrians and killing one. A rank of stainless steel bollards finally brought him to a stop and prevented dozens of other pedestrians from being injured.
But day to day, bollards have a more prosaic use. They have been turned into furniture by pedestrians — absorbed by the city, reclaimed by urban nature.
On an August weekend, in front of a taco counter in SoHo, a man balanced his drink on a bollard as he ate his food. That same week, a single pizza slice left on a bollard in Times Square went unclaimed as office workers and tourists rushed by. Days later, a woman wearing a red TopView Sightseeing shirt sat on the same bollard, waving a poster advertising double-decker bus tours.
“They’ve become an urban amenity,” said Bob Smilowitz, a senior principal at the structural engineering firm Thornton Tomasetti.
Bollards arrived to New York in waves, sometimes following traumatic events.
After a van bomb exploded in the World Trade Center garage in 1993, bollards were installed around the site. In the long shadow of Sept. 11, they proliferated all over the city. In 2018, following the Times Square tragedy, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced a plan to install an additional 1,500 bollards throughout New York.
The posts come in many forms — retractable, rigid, ordinary, ornate, thick, thin. There are other objects that serve a similar purpose, including “sugar cube” barriers and hulking planters. At Lincoln Center, stylish, warped concrete blocks guard the square. “We wanted them to be beautiful, to match the design that the architect had done and to protect the Philip Johnson-designed plaza,” said Douglas Woodward, the former deputy executive director at the Lincoln Center Development Project.
Mr. Woodward, who also served as an urban designer at New York’s Department of City Planning, recalled several post-9/11 bollard designs that were visually thoughtful but didn’t always meet security standards.
In Times Square, globe-shaped bollards were installed — and then later removed. “The N.Y.P.D. were afraid that, when rammed, the globes could have been shot into the building like perfectly shaped cannonballs,” he said.
Effective bollards need support underground, said Mr. Smilowitz, who worked on developing security criteria for the redevelopment of Lower Manhattan after Sept. 11. Finding that kind of depth can be tricky in the subterranean layers of a city, which include a winding network of conduits, subway tunnels and vaults.
“What you see is the tip of the iceberg,” he said. “What’s below the ground surface, the foundation, is what provides the majority of the resistance.”
Like other security measures, bollards can constrict the spaces they ostensibly protect.
For wheelchair users like Jean Ryan, bollards are yet another sidewalk obstacle to navigate. “You have to kind of zigzag around, and then you got the people coming in the other direction,” said Ms. Ryan, the president of Disabled in Action of Metropolitan New York.
Sharon McLennon Wier, the executive director of the Center for Independence of the Disabled, New York, said that as a blind person she often bumps into bollards despite using a cane. “If the cane happens to go through those pillars, it’s great for the cane — but then my body will slam right into it,” she said.
And then there are the people who love bollards. Really.
The World Bollard Association has nearly 200,000 followers on X. The account documents a variety of structures across the globe, some more memorable than others. In Italy, for example, Enzo Mari’s panettone bollards, which are playfully domed like the Christmas cake, have become iconic.
“Bollards are just one of those extremely simple but extremely effective — and can be extremely beautiful — pieces of infrastructure in cities,” said Tiffany Chu, the former chief of staff to Mayor Michelle Wu of Boston.
As far as their main function, bollards are blunt objects with a blunt message.
What is that message?
In a word: No.
Or at least: Not so fast.
And: This is our city too, now. But remember, we’re here for your own good.
To which the city might sigh and say, fine — but hold this for me, will you?
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