BGuthrie Photos: NY -- NYC -- Riverside Park

NY -- NYC -- Riverside Park:

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[1] RIVPK_190531_001.JPG	[2] RIVPK_190531_004.JPG	[3] RIVPK_190531_009.JPG
[4] RIVPK_190531_014.JPG	[5] RIVPK_190531_018.JPG	[6] RIVPK_190531_020.JPG
[7] RIVPK_190531_023.JPG	[8] RIVPK_190531_027.JPG	[9] RIVPK_190531_030.JPG
[10] RIVPK_190531_034.JPG	[11] RIVPK_190531_039.JPG	[12] RIVPK_190531_043.JPG
[13] RIVPK_190531_044.JPG	[14] RIVPK_190531_054.JPG	[15] RIVPK_190531_059.JPG
[16] RIVPK_190531_062.JPG	[17] RIVPK_190531_063.JPG	[18] RIVPK_190531_068.JPG
[19] RIVPK_190531_071.JPG	[20] RIVPK_190531_078.JPG	[21] RIVPK_190531_087.JPG
[22] RIVPK_190531_093.JPG	[23] RIVPK_190531_097.JPG	[24] RIVPK_190531_100.JPG
[25] RIVPK_190531_103.JPG	[26] RIVPK_190531_106.JPG	[27] RIVPK_190531_109.JPG
[28] RIVPK_190531_110.JPG	[29] RIVPK_190531_114.JPG

Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
1. RIVPK_190531_001.JPG: City of New York1935 Gilmore Clarke, Designer St. Clair Stairs 2013 Michael R. Bloomberg, Mayor Scott M. Stringer, Borough President Inez Dickens, Council Member Veronica M. White, Commissioner Parks & Recreation
2. RIVPK_190531_023.JPG: This tree is planted at the side of the tomb of General U.S. Grant, Ex-President of the United States of America, for the purpose of commemorating his greatness by Li Hung-Chang, Guardian Of The Prince, Grand Secretary Of State Earl Of The First Order, Yang Yu Envoy Extraordinary And Minister Plenipotentiary Of China, Vice President Of The Board Of Censors' Kwang Hsu 23rd Year, 4th Moon, May 1897.
3. RIVPK_190531_030.JPG: Riverside Park Conservancy Our goats are deep in the weeds working to remove them. Goats eat almost constantly -- they can consume 25% of their own body weight in vegetation in just one day. Plus their fecal matter adds nutrients to the soil as they go. It's an all around win -- these natural climbers are a sustainable, chemical-free way to remove invasive species from this difficult-to-access landscape. Go[a]tham May 21st through summer's end
4. RIVPK_190531_034.JPG: Amiable Child Monument From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia The Amiable Child Monument is a monument located in New York City's Riverside Park. It stands west of the southbound lanes of Riverside Drive north of 122nd Street. It is a monument to a small boy who died in what was then an area of country homes near New York City. One side of the monument reads: "Erected to the Memory of an Amiable Child, St. Claire Pollock, Died 15 July 1797 in the Fifth Year of His Age." The monument is composed of a granite urn on a granite pedestal inside a wrought iron fence. It is across the street from Grant's Tomb. The monument, originally erected by George Pollock, who was either the boy's father or his uncle, has been replaced twice due to deterioration. The present marker was placed on the site in 1967 to replace a marble marker installed by the city in 1897. During Morningside Heights's Golden Age, when the nearby Claremont Inn served luminaries that included George M. Cohan, Cole Porter, Lillian Russell and Mayor Jimmy Walker, the site inspired pilgrimages and poetry. Of the many verses written about the memorial is Herman George Scheffauer's "An Amiable Child," which describes the grave as being "like a song of peace in iron frays." An identically named poem by Anna Markham, wife of proletarian author and critic Edwin Markham, opens with the lines that defined the monument for her contemporaries: "At Riverside, on the slow hill-slant / Two memoried graves are seen / A granite dome is over Grant / and over a child the green." The monument is also the inspiration for Irene Marcuse's novel Death of an Amiable Child. By one late nineteenth-century account, as related by Donald Reynolds, an attempt to relocate the grave in order to clear space for General Grant's tomb, which was quickly abandoned by the city after a groundswell of public opposition, transformed the "tribute to the gentleness that underlies the apparent brutality of the great city" into "almost a national institution". The monument is thought to be the only single-person private grave on city-owned land in New York City.
5. RIVPK_190531_039.JPG: Erected to the memory of an amiable child, St. Claire Pollock. Died 15 July 1797, in the fifth year of his age.
6. RIVPK_190531_044.JPG: "Man that is born of woman is of few days and full of trouble. He cometh like a flower and is cut down; he fleeth also as a shadow and continueth not." -- Job 14:1-2
7. RIVPK_190531_054.JPG: Amiable Child Monument By Sabrina | February 8, 2013 | Points of Interest One hundred yards north of Grant's Tomb, the "Amiable Child Monument" consists of a small, simple urn on a pedestal surrounded by iron fence. On the west side of the pedestal facing the river where the boy died, is a Biblical quotation from the Book of Job: "Man that is born of woman is of a few days, and full of trouble. He cometh forth like a flower and is cut down: he fleeth also as a shadow, and continueth not." The east side of the pedestal, which faces the site of his family's former home reads, "Erected to the Memory of an Amiable Child, St. Claire Pollock, Died 15 July 1797 in the Fifth Year of His Age." The Amiable Child Monument was erected by George Pollock, a wealthy linen merchant from Dublin, who is said to be either the boy's uncle, or his father. Pollock built his home on Strawberry Hill, which was later renamed Claremont, although not after little St. Claire. The setting of the Revolutionary War Battle of Harlem Heights, fought on September 16, 1776, Strawberry Hill was located on what was then the highest physical point in Manhattan. The estate, in today's geography, stretched east to west from Broadway to the Hudson River, and north to south from 125th Street to 96th Street. On July 15, 1797, St. Claire Pollock fell to his death from the edge of the cliffs overlooking the Hudson River. Servants found his body washed up on the rocks that evening. Preferring not to bury the child in a church graveyard, George Pollock decided instead to bury the child at the site of his death. Soon after the death of St. Claire, Pollock sold his estate. He asked the new owners to care for the grave, writing to them: "There is a small enclosure . . . within which lie the remains of a favorite child, covered by a marble monument. You will confer a peculiar and interesting favor upon me by allowing me to convey the enclosure to you so that you will consider it a part of your own estate, keeping it, however, always enclosed and sacred." The area became part of Riverside Park in the 1870s and in that time, the monument has been replaced twice due to deterioration; once in 1897 and again in 1967. The original memorial once stood on the cliffs overlooking the Hudson River, but because of changes in Manhattan's geography, the current monument, built of Barre granite, is now located in a thickly wooded area at the eastern edge of the Bird Sanctuary at 123rd Street. The Amiable Child Monument is unique because it may be the only single-person private grave on city-owned land in New York City. People are still drawn to the monument more than 200 years after the death of the "amiable child." Both a book of poetry and a contemporary mystery novel were inspired by this historical site. Also, neighbors continue to decorate the grave of St. Claire Pollack with flowers and wreaths, especially near the date of his death.
8. RIVPK_190531_062.JPG: The four trees west of the chaplains row are planted in sacred memory of members of all our armed forces of the United States who made the supreme sacrifice in the Korean War of 1950 in the defense of freedom Presented to the City of New York October 25, 1953 by Daughters of the Defenders of the Republic, U.S.A. Amanda Shaw Hirsch Founder, President General
9. RIVPK_190531_063.JPG: Battle of Harlem Heights September 16 – 1776 In grateful remembrance of the brave soldiers of New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia who under General George Washington fought and died on this site for liberty in their country's struggle against British tyranny. Dedicated by the Daughters of the Defenders of the Republic, U.S.A. Amanda Shaw Hirsch Founder & President-General May 16, 1961
10. RIVPK_190531_068.JPG: Chaplains Memorial These London Plane trees were planted in memory of Four Chaplains of U.S. Army Rev. George L. Fox, Chc. Rabbi Alexander D. Goode, Chc. Rev. Clark V. Poling, Chc. Rev. Father John P. Washington, Chc. who, after giving their life belts to their fellow service men locked arms and praying went down together, with the transport Dorchester sunk by a German submarine February 3, 1943. Presented to the City of New York by Daughters of the Defenders of the Republic, U.S.A. November 5, 1950
11. RIVPK_190531_093.JPG: Erected By The Woman's Health Protective Association Of New York City To Commemorate Its Twenty Fifth Year Of Activity On Behalf Of The Public Health 1884---1909 Mary E. Trautmann, President Esther Herrman - Frances Stiebel Helene S. Bell - Anna C. Holt
12. RIVPK_190531_097.JPG: The water fountain has been tested. For more information, visit nyc.gov/parks/lead-testing
13. RIVPK_190531_106.JPG: Woman's Health Protective Association Riverside Park Located along Riverside Drive at 116th Street, this marble stele and drinking fountain was designed to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Woman's Health Protective Association (WHPA) of New York City in 1909. Bruno Louis Zimm (1876–1943), who also created the Slocum Memorial Fountain in Manhattan's Tompkins Square Park, received the commission to sculpt this monument. Dedicated in 1910, the stele depicts two female figures holding a lamp. These forms were representative of the Association's commitment to shedding light on the public health issues facing women. The names of its members are inscribed along the benches to the right and left of the stele. Members of the WHPA were usually part of the city's elite, and Charlotte Wilbour, one of the names inscribed along the Riverside Park benches, helped to found the first New York City Woman Suffrage Association in 1870. This more radical branch of the movement (in comparison with the relatively conservative chapter in Boston) lobbied against the passage of the 15th amendment, which proposed to give suffrage to African-American men. Leaders Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton opposed the male focus of the bill and suggested a new, 16th amendment in its place, one that would offer "universal suffrage" to all races, genders, and religions. The dream of the founding suffragettes finally actualized on August 16, 1920, eleven years after this fountain was commissioned. With the vote in hand, the National Woman Suffrage Association disbanded, but its surviving members went on to become the core of the League of Women Voters and to continue the focus on women's health issues in New York City.
Wikipedia Description: Riverside Park (Manhattan)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Riverside Park is a scenic waterfront public park on the Upper West Side of the borough of Manhattan in New York City, operated and maintained by the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation. The park consists of a narrow 4-mile (6.4 km) strip of land between the Hudson River and the gently curving rise-and-fall of Riverside Drive. When the park was first laid out, access to the river was blocked by the right-of-way of the New York Central Railroad West Side Line; later the railroad track was covered over with an esplanade lined with honey-locusts. Riverside Park also contains part of the Manhattan Waterfront Greenway, which encircles Manhattan's waterfronts with car-free bike routes.

History

Development

The 191 acres (0.77 km2) of land which form the original area of the Park (from 72nd to 125th Streets) were undeveloped prior to construction of the Hudson River Railroad, built in 1846 to connect New York City to Albany. The first proposal to convert the riverside precipice into a park was contained in a pamphlet written by William R. Martin, a parks commissioner, in 1865. In 1866, a bill introduced into the Legislature by commissioner Andrew Green was approved, the first segment of park was acquired through condemnation in 1872, and construction began.

The conceptual plan for a new park and road was drawn by Frederick Law Olmsted, designer of the nearby Central Park. Subsequently, a series of designers set out to devise the new landscape, incorporating Olmsted's idea of a park with a tree-lined drive curving around the valleys and rock outcroppings and overlooking the river. From 1875 to 1910, architects and horticulturalists such as Calvert Vaux and Samuel Parsons laid out the stretch of park/road between 72nd and 125th Streets according to the English gardening ideal, creating the appearance that the park was an extension of the Hudson River Valley. With the beginning of the City Beautiful movement in the early twentieth century, the border was extended north to 155th Street. F. Stuart Williamson designed the extension with its decorative viaduct, castle-like retaining walls and grand entry ensembles.

Robert Moses expansion

In 1937, Robert Moses completed the "Westside Improvement Project" to transform the park, which had become a haven for squatters. Moses's project added new landfill west of the tracks, covered the New York Central rail line, and constructed the Henry Hudson Parkway. The park and the parkway were done so skillfully that the public is generally unaware that the Freedom Tunnel, a rail tunnel now used by Amtrak, is underneath. The project, which cost more than $100 million in the 1930s, was twice as big as the Hoover Dam project. The project plan by Gilmore D. Clarke and Clinton Loyd added 132 acres (53 ha) to the park and took recreation into consideration.

Moses' biographer Robert Caro envisaged Moses surveying the area before his project, finding:

a wasteland six miles (10 km) long, stretching from where he stood all the way north to 181st street ... The 'park' was nothing but a vast low-lying mass of dirt and mud. Unpainted, rusting, jagged wire fences along the tracks barred the city from its waterfront ... The engines that pulled trains along the tracks burned coal or oil; from their smokestacks a dense black smog rose toward the apartment houses, coating windowsills with grit ... [a stench] seemed to hang over Riverside Drive endlessly after each passage of a train carrying south to the slaughterhouses in downtown Manhattan carload after carload of cattle and pigs

The park was landmarked as part of the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.

Riverside Park South

In the 1980s Donald Trump, then owner of the 57 acres (230,000 m2) of land just south of Riverside Park that had been the Penn Central freight rail yard, proposed building a massive development including a huge shopping mall and the world's tallest skyscraper. Facing great opposition and hobbled by his weak financial position, Trump agreed in 1990 to adopt a new plan for the site put forward by six civic groups (Municipal Art Society, Natural Resources Defense Council, The Parks Council, Regional Plan Association, Riverside Park Fund, and Westpride). The new plan, called Riverside South, included much smaller buildings and, as the central element, a new Riverside Park South, stretching between 72nd and 59th streets, mirroring the design of Riverside Park further north. In order to expand Riverside Park by 25 acres (100,000 m2), Trump's proposed shopping mall would be removed and the elevated West Side Highway would be relocated eastward to grade and buried. A new Riverside Boulevard would curve above the relocated highway, with the park sloping down toward the river. Portions of the former rail yard, such as the New York Central Railroad 69th Street Transfer Bridge, would be incorporated into the new park.

The Civic Alternative

In November 1998, the Thomas Balsley & Associates-designed first phase of the new Riverside Park South started; Phase 1, a 7 acres (3 ha) section from 72nd to 68th Streets, was opened three years later in April 2001. Pier I at 70th Street, part of the railyard, was rebuilt; it maintains its original length of 795 feet (242 m), but is narrower than originally, at 55 feet (17 m). Phase 2 comprises a waterfront section from 70th Street to 65th Street. Phase 2, opened in June 2003, has two plazas at 66th and 68th Streets, as well as a jagged waterfront. Phase 3, opened in August 2006, stretches from 65th Street to 62nd Street on the waterfront. Phase 4 opened in 2007 along the waterfront from 62nd to 57th Streets. The design of Phases 5, and 6, located between the current and future highway alignments, is partially tied to the fate of the highway relocation, the timing of which is still uncertain. However the Parks Department has approved interim and final designs for those two sections; construction of the interim park will start in 2017. Relocating the highway will require some reconstruction of the park.

With the addition of Riverside Park South and Hudson River Park, created between Battery Park and 59th Street as part of the 1990s West Side Highway replacement, a continuous waterfront right-of-way for pedestrians and bicyclists now stretches nearly the length of Manhattan from north to south.

Route and landmarks

The most used sections of Riverside Park are on the tiered slopes between the Hudson and Riverside Drive from 72nd Street to 125th Street. Riverside Park South extends from 72nd to 59th Street on the former Penn Central yard, with an old locomotive on display. Riverside Park South leads to Hudson River Park which goes all the way south to the tip of Manhattan. There is also a northern section of the park from 135th Street to 155th Street and adjacent to Riverbank State Park. Paths along the river connect the park to Hudson River Park to the south and Fort Washington Park to the north. The portion from 181st Street to Dyckman Street, including Inspiration Point, fell into disrepair and disuse in the late 20th century, and was restored at the turn of the century.

Before the park existed, Edgar Allan Poe liked to sit on rocky "Mount Tom" at 83rd Street.

Monuments
* Grant's Tomb at West 122nd Street
* Women's Health Protective Association fountain (1909) at Riverside Drive and 116th Street
* Amiable Child Monument, at Riverside Drive north of 122nd Street, on the slope north of Grant's Tomb; it commemorates the long-ago death of a beloved child, a small boy who died in what was then an area of country homes near New York City. One side of the monument reads: "Erected to the Memory of an Amiable Child, St. Claire Pollock, Died 15 July 1797 in the Fifth Year of His Age." The monument is composed of a granite urn on a granite pedestal inside a wrought iron fence. The monument, originally erected by George Pollock, who was either the boy's father or his uncle, has been replaced twice due to deterioration. The monument is thought to be the only single-person private grave on city-owned land in New York City.
* Eleanor Roosevelt Monument at 72nd Street (Penelope Jencks, sculptor)
* Grant's Tomb at Riverside Drive and West 122nd Street, inspired by the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus (John Hemenway Duncan, architect)
* Joan of Arc statue at 93rd Street (Anna Hyatt Huntington, sculptor; John V. Van Pelt, architect)
* Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument, which commemorates Civil War veterans of both the Union Army and Navy, stands at the west end of 89th Street.
* Riverside Park almost received a monument to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. A granite plaque was set in the paving at the end of the Promenade, near 84th Street, on October 19, 1947. It reads:
"This is the site for the American memorial to the heroes of the Warsaw Ghetto Battle April–May 1943 and to the six million Jews of Europe martyred in the cause of human liberty."
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