According to a piece in the Epoch Times (Free Wi-Fi to be Available in City Parks, August 11, 2011), New York City has renewed its contract with Warner Cable and Cablevision Systems with a portion of that service to provide free Wi-Fi  in 32 parks. Borough Presidents have not decided which parks will be the lucky recipients, but they may include parks that already have free Wi-Fi . With that said, the goal is to provide free  Wi-Fi to parks in underserved areas that do not have other Wi-Fi options. Subscribers to these two cable companies will have completely free service while non-subscribers will receive 30 minutes free per month with a nominal fee in 24 hour increments.

I sent an email to find out if the parks have been decided yet. I'll keep you updated. In the meantime, I wish you a happy, healthy and productive 2012.

Happy New Year!

Time to Hibernate

Winter is heading to my area and with it comes the icy weather. During this time of  unpredictable weather and the craziness of the holidays, I am concentrating on my research rather than hoofing it through the city looking at parks. I plan on getting back to confirming park locations in early March or when the winter weather lends itself to photography. Until then, I really want your help.

What’s your favorite and why? Is it just because it is near your office and easy to get to when you want to grab a coffee or get away from your cubemates? Do you live near a pocket park that you frequent? What do you like about it? Send me locations and any other information you know about your favorites as well as why you like it. You may be included in my book.

While you ponder these questions, enjoy this photo from @NYCphotos.

http://twitpic.com/7qgssq#.TuFVd0FU4gI.blogger

Essex Street Trolley Terminal May Become Underground Park

This is something I became aware of a while ago. It is a project similar to the "High Line" project in which they created a park on the old elevated subway tracks, but underground. People seem to be reclaiming space and turning it into green space, but this takes the idea to a whole other level. Check out the link from WCBS880.com, complete with video of the space as it is now.

Peter Hine Of MTA Real Estate Stars In Video Walking Tour Of Essex Street Trolley Terminal Which Some Hope Gets Coverted Into Underground Park Dubbed 'Low Line' « CBS New York

UPDATE: Dan Barasch and James Ramsey have a Kickstarter Campaign going to fund their Low Line project. Get involved in this unique idea by donating a couple of dollars to the project. Even $5 helps. <sigh> 'Gotta love the ingenuity of New York and its people!

Zuccotti Park

Zuccotti Park, a square bordered by Broadway, Trinity Place, Liberty Street and Cedar Street, has been in the news lately thanks to the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators, but do you know its history? It was formerly known as Liberty Park before it was damaged during the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center. After the cleaned up the debris, it became a staging area during the recovery efforts.

United States Steel built the original Liberty Park in 1968 in return for a height bonus for their new building, One Liberty Plaza. It was renamed Zuccotti Park after John Zuccotti, who was the chairman of Brookfield Office Properties at the time the company completed renovations of the park in 2006. Zuccotti was also the former chairman of the City Planning Commission and first deputy mayor of New York under Mayor Abe Beame.

The park is currently the base of the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations. Since it is public space, it does not follow the usual curfews other parks have to abide by, however due to sanitation concerns, demonstrators are no longer allowed to sleep in the park overnight.

Zuccotti Park has seating and tables, and briefly featured the World Trade Center Cross before it was moved to the permanent 9/11 Memorial. It also hosts two sculptures: Mark Di Suvero’s Joie de Vivre, and Double Check by John Seward Johnson, which is a sculpture of a businessman getting ready to start his day. In the initial hours of the 9/11 attacks, people rushed to the statue thinking it was a man covered in debris and needing aid.

Tudor City Greens

Tudor City Greens is alongside Tudor City Place, which is elevated and runs parallel to First Avenue. The park is actually two parks that straddle 42nd Street down below. Fred F. French, a real estate developer, saw the need for a tranquil residential area for busy middle class New Yorkers and began building Tudor City in 1927. French wanted residents to enjoy green, open spaces in the middle of the city while also being able to wlak to work in Midtown. As a result, Tudor City was built around parks and open spaces. 
After French died in 1936, his firm owned and managed the Tudor City buildings until the property was purchased by the Helmsley-Spears company in 1972. The problem was that Helmsley-Spears wanted to build skyscrapers on French’s suburban utopia, but the tenants were having none of this. When they saw the bulldozers approaching, they rallied and stopped them before they could begin bulldozing the park space.

Time Equities, Inc., took over in 1987 and donated the parks to The Trust for Public Land putting an end to future development and construction in the parks. Tudor City Greens, Inc, formed in 1987, is curently tasked with the upkeep and preservation of the parks.

Tudor City Greens parks are open to the public from 7am to dusk daily with the exception of occasional special events during which a portion of the parks is closed to the public. There are also two playgrounds: Mary O’Connor Playground on the north side of  42nd St., and Tudor Grove Playground on the south side of 42nd St.

SOURCE: http://tudorcitygreens.org/item_list.asp?subcat=7&subtitle=History

Copyright © 2011 by Rosemary O’Brien     All Rights Reserved

When I went into the city a couple of weeks ago, I was pleased to have found the parks I was looking for, but absolutely delighted to find a few new parks and plazas! That is the benefit of going into the city and searching on foot rather than driving through the streets, for example. 

Some people have asked about my process for this book since it is so very different from writing a novel. I tell them I look at it as a journalism project. I’m simply reporting what I see and digging up the history to go along with it. For the purpose of this website, the word “parks” actually refers to pocket parks, urban plazas and community gardens. It may even include indoor public atriums as this project moves forward.

 I initially find the parks by scouring various online and print sources. Since the parks, plazas and gardens are not listed in one place, this is what will probably take me the most time. If I am looking at Google Maps, for example, I look for green spaces in the satellite portion of the maps. Many time, the location is not a location listed anywhere, so after comparing it with the lists I have, I jot down the location to be explored later. When I go into the city, I map a route and take off to find the parks, making note of those I discover in my travels. I take a few photos as placeholders and for  my photographer during the photography phase, and check them off on my map while making notes about them in my notebook.

It is time-consuming, but on a day with beautiful weather, it can be a lot of fun. 


Copyright © 2011 by Rosemary O’Brien     All Rights Reserved

COLUMBUS PARK (Baxter, Mulberry, Worth and Bayard Streets)

Columbus Park, June 2011

(You may want to lower your volume. There is a lot going on in this video.)

This is one of the coolest parks I’ve come across so far. Columbus Park is located down in Chinatown and is full of activity. From the Asian Karaoke, complete with the pick-up orchestra and singers whograb the sheet music and jump in, to the people practicing martial arts in the recreational center, to the skateboarders working on their jumps by Baxter St., this park is full of activity. The day I was there, they even had one of those community pianos set up around the city being played by various passersby.

Originally built in 1897 by one of the original co-designers of Central Park, Calvert Vaux, Columbus Park began life as Mulberry Bend Park. In 1911, the Park was named Columbus Park after Christopher Columbus, obviously. Bordered by Baxter, Mulberry, Worth and Bayard Streets, today’s Columbus Park is a neighborhood hangout and, in my opinion, one of the quintessential New York City pocket parks.

If you go:

Chinatown Ice Cream Factory, 65 Bayard St. It's very small, and the line may stretch out the door, but it's worth it. Where else can you get green tea ice cream or my new favorite, toasted almond?

Jing Fong Restaurant, 20 Elizabeth St. I am told this is very authentic as dim sum restaurants go. When your number is called, you go up a long escalator to find yourself in dim sum Heaven. Ladies with steam trollies go by and you choose your dumplings. Very affordable lunch.

SOURCES:

New Yorkled http://www.newyorkled.com/columbuspk.htm

NYC Dept. of Parks and Recreation http://www.nycgovparks.org/parks/M015/

From the "Huh?!" file

Huh?

I work from home at my computer every day except (most of the time) weekends. While I work, I stream one of the New York radio news stations and was incensed to hear about the success of another project on Kickstarter. $20,000 was pledged for this book about the smells of New York City. It’s a scratch and sniff book about good smells such as pizza, shish-kabobs and bagels, but it also include the bad smells all New Yorkers contend with such as sewer steam and garbage.

I ask you. Which book would be more helpful and worthwhile to fund - a book on smells or a book about where to find the best pocket parks and their histories?


This sounds like spilled milk, I know, but it isn’t. I’m simply baffled, once again, by the tastes of the American public. Perhaps it is because she works right in the city and I do not. Perhaps she begged more, which I do not, or has more connections being out in the world rather than working virtually. I don’t know. I am still going and ready to hit the city again in September. Wish me luck as I wish the Scratch and Sniff author luck.

Park Day 2011 in West Virginia

If you live in Parkersburg, WV, you have the opportunity to create your own pocket park on September 17^th, 2011! That’s the idea behind Parkday 2011. According to contest rules:

Contest participants will be required to construct their Pocket Park within the dimensions of their assigned 8’ width x 20’ length parking spot.

This is apparently a contest to promote healthy living. Though I’m not sure how that translates into decorating  a parking space, it still looks like fun.  Go to http://bit.ly/oYK1XC and learn about this contest.

Aerial view of Parkersburg, WV circa 1952

As for me, I'm recovering from foot surgery and off my feet for three weeks. I'm going to spend that time researching with the hope of hitting the ground running in September. Enjoy August in NYC or wherever you happen to be, and remember to send me the location of your favorite pocket park or any you may come across in NYC.

Pocket parks often mis-labelled

Rev. Linnette C. Williamson Memorial Park

While doing my research about pocket parks, I’ve realized many people confused small parks with pocket parks. A pocket park, by most definitions, is:

• located in the middle of a city
• often between two buildings or at the end of a street
• visible from the street
• often filled with trees and greenery
• set up with chairs, tables and/or benches to sit on
• reclaimed or private space set aside for public use

The original “vest pocket park” and the very first pocket park was the Rev. Linnette C. Williamson Memorial Park created in 1965 between two buildings on 128th St. It was developed as a way to add green open space to an area in the city that was in most need of public space. According to their website, two others were created on the same block later in the year. In 1967, Paley Park on 53rd St. and 5th Ave. in Midtown Manhattan was created to honor William S. Paley’s father, Samuel Paley.  It’s sister park, Greenacre Park located on 51st St. between 2nd and 3rd Ave., came along in 1971. This privately-owned public space was set aside for the enjoyment of the public.

These, my friends, are pocket parks, not the little bit of land next to a building on the outskirts of town. The others are still parks, but I don’t consider them vest pocket parks or pocket parks. If you disagree, I would love to hear your thoughts. Most of all, if you find any, please send me their locations. I am concentrating on New York City right now, but I plan on expanding once I write the most excellent and authoritative guide on pocket parks in New York City.

Kickstarter Promotion Ending Soon

This is to let you know I am still taking donations for my Pocket Parks of NYC project, even if it does not get funded through Kickstarter.com this time. To donate to this most excellent project, please hit the PayPal  button to the right. Your donation will go to train fare, copy fees, postage, researchers - all of the costs necessary in the writing stage of this innovative guide to free resting spaces in NYC (and later, the world!). If you have not seen the video on the Kickstarter.com site, please view it at http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/writerobrien/pocket-parks-of-nyc before August 1st, 2011.

Thank you again to all of my supporters. 

Update #5: Deadline approacheth. Tell thy friends!

I just tweeted that 66 pledges of $15 each would get me to my goal in time. Can you blast and retweet this to everyone you know? I am exploring having NYC school children making my project THEIR project by giving them community service hours, speaking to their school, even teaching them about writing.

I've approached the school district and they haven't laughed ... yet. No response, but I don't hear any laughter.

I am also planning on making this an app for smartphones and perhaps moving the entire book to Kindles and Nooks to start. An ebook is less expensive and can then be published in print later on.

Regardless, I need your pledges and your friends' pledges and your great Uncle Henry's pledges to continue, so spread the word. Help me locate and write about every pocket park, every urban plaza and every community garden in New York City. After NYC, who knows? These babies are EVERYWHERE!

Thank you for your support.

Pocket Parks of NYC: http://kck.st/lpf5OY

Rosemary

Where did they come from?

In 1965, Mayoral candidate, John Lindsay saw a need to spruce up the city a bit. He suggested that New York City create “vest pocket parks” or “adventure playgrounds.” Later, when he was elected Mayor of New York City, he implemented his ideas and helped created the first vest pocket parks in the city. According to an essay on the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, Park Commissioner, Thomas P.F. Hoving encouragee their use for public events aided him by bring various events to the parks. He even banned cars in Central Park on Sundays. In 1967, the city completed 10 vest pocket parks in vacant city lots equal to or smaller than one-quarter acre.

The very first pocket park was created at 65 W. 128th by Reverend Linnette C. Williamson of  Christ Community Church of Harlem. She was instrumental in developing this pocket park and it was later dedicated in her honor.

Here is one I discovered near 6th Ave. It is right outside an apartment building on 29th St.

Update #2: Public Plaza at 6th and 29th

Posted 1 day ago

This weekend, I went into Manhattan to find pocket parks. What I came away with is even better. I discovered public plazas that are technically pocket parks in that they sit between buildings, but they have no name. The one at 6th and 29th even has a movie screen. During the summer, they have screenings for the general public.

The second photo is of the public plaza on 26th by 6th Ave. It has much more seating than you can see here as well as a little cafe. When I called the management company to find out its name, they answered me as if I had two heads (until I got someone without an attitude). :) Gotta love New York!

• 

If you have any leads, please let me know. I have until August 1st to fund this project or it's dead, at least on Kickstarter. And if you visit a pocket park in NYC, a public plaza or even a city park, I would love it if you sent me pictures and your impressions of the space.

Thank you in advance for taking an interest. Go to http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/writerobrien/pocket-parks-of-nyc/posts to help me fund my project. It has to be fully-funded by August 1st or it will get cancelled. If you hate parks, tell your friends, but really, who hates a good park in the middle of the city?

Thank you.