H and H Coffee

Dedicated to the history of the Hoffmann-Hayman Coffee Co. founded 1899 in San Antonio, Texas.

Brooklyn-based creative studio and development practice founded by David Belt. Best known publicly for the 2010 Brooklyn rooftop dumpster pools installation that became a defining image of the early-2010s wave of low-cost / high-impact urban placemaking.

A prototype Macro-Sea dumpster pool sits on the south face of 601 Delaware in San Antonio — acquired by the project as a sculptural / future-installation piece. Its presence on the H&H property aligns the adaptive-reuse program at 601 Delaware with the broader creative-placemaking lineage Macro-Sea helped establish.

Why Macro-Sea matters for 601 Delaware

The 601 Delaware project is an adaptive-reuse of a 1932 industrial building into a mixed-use heritage venue — museum + roastery + education + events. That project type sits squarely in the lineage Macro-Sea operates in: take an existing industrial fabric, layer in a programmatic mix that activates the space without erasing it, treat the building shell as cultural content rather than as backdrop.

Specific resonances:

  • The dumpster pool as a placemaking gesture. Macro-Sea’s 2010 pools demonstrated that high-impact public-realm interventions don’t require new construction — an upcycled industrial object can become destination programming. The H&H south-face courtyard plan (program vision) has the same gene: the formal 1932 courtyard restored as a venue, augmented by social-pool activation.
  • New Lab and adaptive-reuse-as-program. Macro-Sea / Belt’s work at the Brooklyn Navy Yard on New Lab is the canonical example of turning a stripped industrial shell into a creative-economy anchor without losing its industrial character. The H&H factory has the same starting condition — a 1932 industrial shell stripped of its original equipment (per as-is) — and a similar ambition for its second life.
  • Creative-economy / cultural-economy framing. Macro-Sea’s portfolio reads as a precedent set for the kind of mixed-use heritage venue that 601 Delaware aims to be: not a museum that closes at 5 pm, not a roastery that just sells beans, but a programmed cultural site that operates day and night across multiple revenue streams.

The 601 Delaware dumpster pool prototype

Field Value
Location South face of 601 Delaware, on the grass-overgrown apron in front of the building
Acquisition Purchased as a prototype (specific date / provenance: TBD — purchase records to be located and filed in raw-archives/records/)
Current state On-site as a static prototype; not currently water-filled or activated as a pool
Disposition decision Open question — see program vision and roadmap Phase 0. Options: (a) static prototype as sculpture/exhibit piece, (b) activated water feature for Phase 3 south-face courtyard events, (c) interpretive exhibit piece with signage.

The pool’s presence on the property is a curatorial asset — it gives the south-face courtyard a thematic anchor that ties the H&H heritage program to the broader creative-placemaking conversation Macro-Sea helped start.

Open questions

  • Provenance records — locate the purchase documentation for the prototype (purchase records, designer correspondence, manufacturer documentation). File under raw-archives/records/. See as-is documentation table.
  • Macro-Sea relationship status — has there been direct designer contact (David Belt or Macro-Sea staff) about the prototype’s history and intended use? Worth re-establishing for any future activation.
  • Activation feasibility — what does activating the prototype as a working pool require (water hookup, drainage, filtration, code clearance)? Decision in roadmap Phase 0 block F; execution in Phase 3 south-face courtyard.
  • Interpretive framing — if the pool becomes a museum / exhibit piece rather than an active pool, what’s the curatorial narrative? “How Brooklyn taught us to think about industrial-shell reuse” is one direction; “the cultural lineage of the H&H second life” is another.
  • Other Macro-Sea works that may be relevant precedent — the Park Avenue Tunnel summer activations, Glassphemy (Brooklyn glass-bottle smashing public-art piece), New Lab, and other Belt-led projects. Worth a short reference list for the museum / vision narrative.

See also