There's a painted-steel whale in Marina Park now. It's 60 feet long and 30 feet high, about the height of a three-story building, and it weighs roughly seven tons. Newport's own feed reports that The Mother of All Echoes "has arrived at Newport's Marina Park," part of the 40th-anniversary year LeFrak has been marking along the waterfront since summer. Hoboken Girl put the size in plain terms: a whale "about as tall as a three-story building."
Plenty of people in other cities have stood next to a whale by the artist Mathias Gmachl. Each time, it was there for a set number of weeks or months and then it moved on. Newport is getting the version that stays put.
A Whale Built to Travel
Gmachl's touring work is Echoes – A Voice From Uncharted Waters, a life-size interactive sculpture of a one-year-old blue whale. Its distributor, QDSinternational, says it was co-produced by Montréal's Quartier des spectacles, MuseumsQuartier Wien, and LAC Lugano Arte e Cultura. Its route has gone like this:
- Lugano, Switzerland. The piece premiered at LAC Lugano Arte e Cultura.
- Broadway, Manhattan, fall 2023. 6sqft reported a 55-foot-long whale on the Broadway pedestrian plazas between 38th and 39th Streets. The Garment District Alliance sponsored it, and it was open to the public through November 13.
- Boston and Tremblant. Both are listed as stops after New York.
- Festival Cultural de Mayo, Mexico. Canada was the festival's guest of honor.
- The Embarcadero, San Francisco. It was announced for one year, November 6, 2025 to November 6, 2026, as part of Big Art Loop – Portside.
The San Francisco calendar already runs past that announced end date. The Port of San Francisco scheduled a Waterfront Walkabout for November 19, 2026, and Echoes is a stop on it at Ferry Terminal Plaza. Big Art Loop still lists it as "ON DISPLAY NOW" and gives no removal date. Whatever happens next on the Embarcadero, the touring whale's whole history is a series of runs that end. QDSinternational even offers the touring piece for rental.
What Changes When the Whale Stays
The New York Real Estate Journal described the Newport commission as "a new permanent, site-specific installation." It also says the sculpture "will appear to lift from the park in a dramatic cantilevered pose." A touring sculpture has to fit on a plaza in Midtown or a pier in California. This one was designed for one park, so its pose could be built around that ground.
It's also bigger. The Broadway whale was 55 feet long. Newport's is 60.
The two pieces work differently, too. On Broadway, visitors heard a melodic soundscape, and stepping closer brought up a layer of noise pollution meant to stand for the effect of human industry on the ocean. The published descriptions of Newport's whale focus on steel and light. The plan is for "an integrated lighting scheme" to "animate its interior with shifting waves of color at night." It was designed in 3D, transferred onto welded steel, and then hand-painted, with mixed-reality holograms guiding the painting.
The idea behind it carries over from the touring work. Gmachl's Echoes series explores ecology and how people relate to the natural world. Here is how he described the touring whale to 6sqft in 2023:
"I want to provide an open space – a platform – for the public to have conversations about the future of our planet. Not just about whales, but of all life that exists."
In Marina Park, that platform has no closing date.
A Night Piece Down the Walkway From a Daylight One
Until this fall, Newport's best-known artwork was Jaume Plensa's Water's Soul. It stands about 80 feet tall on a redeveloped historic pier at 1 Park Lane South, next to Newport Green and right off the Hudson River Waterfront Walkway. Newport calls it the neighborhood's first public art installation by an international artist. LeFrak and Simon chose Plensa for the commission. Hoboken Girl covered its official debut, set for October 21, 2021, so the head has been on the water for five falls now. Newport's own label for the work reads "2020."
Newport lists Water's Soul as open for viewing from dawn to dusk. The whale was designed with nighttime in mind, since its color-shifting lighting is built for after dark. So the waterfront now has two large figures by international artists that work on different schedules. One is meant to be seen in daylight, and the other lights up after sunset.
Plensa's own description of Water's Soul, quoted on Newport's page for the sculpture, calls water "a marvelous metaphor": "one drop of water is quite alone, like a single person, but many drops can create a tidal wave or immense rivers and oceans." A head looking across the river and a whale rising out of a park make an obvious pair on the same walk, and LeFrak described the whale as joining Water's Soul in Newport's growing set of waterfront public art.
As of late October, Newport's feed confirms the whale has arrived. Newport's events calendar doesn't list an unveiling date or a date for the first lit evening. When the lights do come on, they'll be a permanent part of Newport's evenings.
The Food Truck That Also Came Home
The whale isn't the only thing that stopped touring this fall. Jersey Digs reported in early October that Carlitos Barbecue Taqueria has opened in the top-floor food court at Newport Centre. The pit-smoked barbecue taco concept "started as a food truck along the Jersey City waterfront." Its first brick-and-mortar location opened at Westfield Garden State Plaza in 2018, about a year after the truck started running in Jersey City. Newport's own post says the concept began as a Jersey City food truck in 2017.
Newport Centre is at 30 Mall Dr W. If you've only ever caught the Carlitos truck parked on a different block each time, it now has a counter that stays in one place, a few minutes inland from Marina Park.
Fixed Dates on the Same Stretch Through Christmas Eve
Newport's holiday calendar builds toward December, and every date below is close to the whale.
| Date | Where | What |
|---|---|---|
| Saturdays and Sundays, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. | Newport Green | Newport Carousel open |
| Saturday, November 21 through December 24 | Newport Centre | Santa photo experience, with hours that vary by day; reservations recommended |
| Sundays, November 29, December 6 and December 13, 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. | Newport Centre, Center Court | Pet photos with Santa; no reservation required |
| Tuesday, December 1, 6 to 8 p.m. | Town Square Park | Newport Tree Lighting |
Simon's Santa photo page lists opening day, November 21, from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., and the hours change through the season after that. The splash pad at Newport Green is closed for the season, and Newport says it will reopen in 2027.
The tree lighting falls on a Tuesday evening in early December, after dark, a short walk from Marina Park. If the whale's interior lighting is running by then, the tree and the whale will both be lit on the same stretch of the Hudson that evening.
If you're thinking about what your Newport home is worth now that there's a permanent whale on the walk, Bill Kowalczuk and Guy Hobson will tell you where it stands, quietly and with real numbers. Request a complimentary home valuation.
