DeLury Square

Never say Park Odyssey isn't up to the minute. Less than a week after the November 8 ribbon-cutting, we paid a visit to DeLury Square, a new park by Fulton Street, just a bit inland of South Street Seaport.

A "peaceful, green oasis within this densely populated and busy commercial and residential area" (as per Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe), DeLury came about through a realignment of the intersection of Fulton and Gold Streets and a $2.3 million investment from the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation. It's named, like the simpler plaza that preceded it, for John DeLury Sr., founder of Local 831 (a sanitation workers' union).



The rocks and shrubs and the little waterfall are supposed to evoke the terrain of Manhattan's native forests, according to Alex Hart, the park's designer.



Maybe so; they read more like modern art to me. Want native forests? Head uptown to Inwood Hill Park. But that's no matter. Right here in this gritty, densely populated, more or less characterless segment of Lower Manhattan is a brand new park. With green things, and flowing water, and benches from which to enjoy them. Sweet.