Thanks to the NYC Ferry it's now easy for people from around the city to visit some of the parks on the Bronx coast that aren't otherwise easy to get to by public transportation. A few years ago, for example, a visit to Soundview Park required a long subway ride followed by a walk through a neighborhood that seemed saddled with infrastructural neglect.
The ferry's new Soundview line terminates at Clason Point Park (the name is pronounced "Clawson") at the tip of a small peninsula that houses the tiny neighborhood of Harding Park. To quote Forgotten New York, Harding Park is "the maze of little unnamed streets and bungalows found along Bronx River, Leland, Gildersleeve and Cornell Avenues in the southwest sector of Clason Point...[I]t seems independent from the rest of the Bronx, since its street pattern is different and it's cut off by water from the rest of the borough. It's very, very odd."
As exploratory documentarians demonstrate year after year, New York City encompasses many "very, very odd" places and things. Clason Point Park itself, though, isn't one of them.
As in many places on July 5, the grounds were littered with fireworks debris. But the park's virtues, like its swathes of grass shaded by trees, remained evident.
Viewed from beneficial angles, the winding paths and healthy-looking trees shading clean benches and jumbles of grey rocks make the park an appealing waterfront green space...
...though not one for swimming.
A more recent Forgotten New York post – by Sergey Kadinsky, author of Hidden Waters of New York City (a book any NYC explorer who's interested in history will find valuable) – recounts how Clason Point once housed an amusement park, and later a sort of mini-Catskills resort called Shore Haven that catered to the Bronx's then-substantial Jewish population.
Back in the 1940s, revelers would have had a nice view of the Whitestone Bridge connecting the Bronx with Queens, though not the newer Throgs Neck Bridge, which you can see beyond the Whitestone today.
Information about Isaac Clason, other than that he was a Scottish landowner and merchant, is hard to find. The "point" that bears his name has an interesting history, though. Here's one awful detail recounted in the AIA Guide, as quoted in a 2000 New York Times article by Philip Lopate: "Tragedy came in 1924 when a freak wind squall blew down the Clason Point Amusement Park's Ferris wheel...killing 24."
The park's upper portion winds northward along the eastern edge of the peninsula. It's not hard to imagine a good-sized resort or amusement park on this large, flat, unused grassy field.
Continuing north through this quiet area of the park, we encountered only one other human, who appeared to be unhoused and was sleeping on the ground. (Not pictured.)
A tree full of delicious mulberries rewarded us on this hot, sweaty day of exploration.
Leaving the park, we wended our way to a nearby community garden called the Waterfront Garden. Its lush, fanciful landscaping and view of the East River (or Long Island Sound, if you prefer) welcomed us inside. So did a friendly local man who was passing by.
The garden is somehow affiliated with the New York Botanical Garden, and it shows.
Next up: onward to Pugsley Creek Park.
All photos © Critical Lens Media
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