Starlight Park

Starlight Park, an essential part of the slowly-but-surely developing Bronx River Greenway, officially opened in the spring of 2023 after 20-plus years of work. The result is a unique park of 13 acres hugging both sides of the Bronx River between Concrete Plant Park and the Bronx Zoo.

Starlight Park inherits its whimsical name from an early-20th-century amusement park that use to reside here. The Bowery Boys write that Starlight Amusement Park sounds like it was "a hyper, dizzying place" with "an enormous swimming pool with faux rock features, a nearby roller coaster" (where a terrible accident occurred in 1922), and "Coney Island-esque games and rides, boat rides, and outdoor performances by opera singers and greased up wrestlers."

Picture that. Opera singers and greased-up wrestlers. Now that's entertainment!

Today's park is a colorful mix, with river views, retired infrastructure, sports and boating facilities, and the Bronx River Alliance headquarters.

The site preserves relics of a time, decades ago, when the Bronx River was an active route for transporting goods. A disused railroad bridge still stands.

Traversing the park you cross the river more than once on well-preserved, cheery-blue bridges.

These bridges, according to a city press release, "help to link the park to surrounding communities, one going over the Bronx River itself just north of Westchester Avenue and one going over railroad tracks owned by Amtrak at E. 172 Street. New York State DOT built one new bridge spanning the river as part of the creation of Sheridan Boulevard, completed in 2019."

Sheridan Boulevard, incidentally, which runs alongside Starlight Park, is New York State Route 895 – "the highest-numbered signed state route in New York," per East Coast Roads. A few years ago this grade-level road replaced the elevated Sheridan Expressway, the onetime Interstate 895 – another boon to the people of the Bronx.

The Bronx Times report on the completion of the conversion, dated Dec. 20, 2019, noted: "Other improvements included in the project are transforming the currently overgrown Garrison Park and building a shared use path between Concrete Plant Park and Garrison Park."

Done and done.

In the (redundantly named) "Edible Food Garden" at Concrete Plant Park. This didn't exist on our first visit back in 2016.

Views of the river reveal both its prettied-up stretches and its grimy history. In some spots, you could really think you're in the wild.

In others, not so much.

The Bronx River Greenway is by no means a contiguous whole. Not yet.

The Greenway project has been a collaboration among city agencies: Parks, Transportation, and the Department of Design and Construction. Not to mention the aforementioned Bronx River Alliance. New York State's ongoing work on the roads and highways is playing a part too. And all this work is paying off. Starlight Park and the other completed sections are already a big positive for the surrounding Bronx neighborhoods.

To this point the parks include, according to the city press release, "140 new trees and close to 12,000 new shrubs to support the restoration of the Bronx River shoreline, including wetlands that improve water quality in the river and help to curtail erosion." We do love our wetlands here at Park Odyssey.

They've also installed new retaining walls and lighting, a dog run, "4,000 feet of new pathway" and "drainage and electrical upgrades." The press release notes that 50,000 tons of soil has been "removed and replaced to promote ecological health." That's a helluva lot of soil. I wonder where they put the old dirt.

A final note: There's another little park called West Farms Rapids Park at the north end of Starlight, completed in 2020. We somehow missed it on this walk, although we may have traversed this spot on a Bronx River walking and canoeing adventure back in 2019, which also took us on something called the Mitsubishi Riverwalk, which, if it still exists, is part of the Bronx Zoo.

The moral, as if it needed repeating: There's always something more to explore.

All photos © Oren Hope

Garrison Park

Never forgetting the quest that launched this blog project 13 years ago, I continue to seek to visit every park in New York City. And although there have been a few exceptions, each park gets its own blog post. In that spirit, I give you Garrison Park.

Part of the in-progress Bronx River Greenway, a ribbon of parkland that's slowly blossoming along the rejuvenated Bronx River, Garrison itself is little more than a stretch of bike and walking path dangling like a tail off the industrially picturesque Concrete Plant Park. But when I discovered the latter in 2016, it was something of an oasis.

Concrete Plant Park, 2023

Looking north from Concrete Plant Park

Today, Concrete Plant Park continues as Garrison Park to the south, and to the north links up with a tiny entity called West Farms Rapids (formerly Bronx River Park) and then the very substantial new Starlight Park.

Alongside these parks runs a train track. Following it south on the map, it curves away from the river and appears to end up at Hunts Point. The fact that you can just walk across it here suggests that it's no longer in use, but I don't know that for sure.

The park also passes under the Bruckner Expressway.

Though it's mostly a pathway, Garrison Park does offer benches for enjoying riparian breezes and inner-city quiet.

Next up: Starlight Park

All photos © Oren Hope

Concrete Plant Park, ABC Waterwash, and Colgate Close Park

A number of New York City parks are imaginative reframings of archaic infrastructure and industrial facilities. The High Line in Manhattan is the most famous example. For another, just last week we posted an account of a visit to a former reservoir in The Bronx, now a park called the Williamsbridge Oval.

Guess what Concrete Plant Park, also in The Bronx, used to be?

But first, speaking of archaic infrastructure: When you come out of the Whitlock Avenue subway station you're greeted by an almost medieval-looking ruin. This is part of the long-abandoned Westchester Avenue train station.

Forgotten NY has some pre-ivied pictures of this once-handsome structure.

Now, into the park.

The Parks Department joined forces with the Bronx River Alliance and community groups to revitalize a half-mile-long stretch of Bronx River waterfront at the start of the new century. In 2009, the park opened.

As you enter from the north, images of abandonment quickly give way to pretty, if not quite bucolic, waterfront views.

To the north is the bridge that carries Westchester Avenue across the river.

As you continue south, the structures that give the park its name loom into view.

These are the remains of the Transit Mix Concrete Corporation's concrete batch mix plant.

Painted a dusty red, they rise like titanic modernist sculptures against the sky.

A million trees? Piece of cake. A billion oysters? Now that would really be something.

In the meantime, you can fish here. There's even a boat launch – this is part of the Bronx River Blueway.

As you continue south, the park ends (unless you count the undeveloped, fenced-off strip between the bike/walking path and the river) and the path leads out toward Bruckner Boulevard and the Bruckner Expressway. Parallel to the path, colorful graffiti lines an overgrown railroad track.

Gazing north from Bruckner Boulevard gives a view of the whole long, narrow park strung along the river.

On the east side, ABC Carpet and Home sponsored a environmental wetland art project called Waterwash ABC by the artist Lillian Ball, which opened in 2012. "Through innovative design, the project will construct a wetland park to filter storm runoff, improve habitat, and increase Bronx River public access," the plan stated. "Outreach will educate community about watershed issues through an aesthetic nature experience."

There was no public access when we passed by; it was locked up tight. Was it still being maintained in the summer of 2016? We couldn't tell. There are some nice photos from the opening at Ball's website.

As we headed to Soundview Park (covered in the next post), we walked by Colgate Close Park, a onetime "unused concrete lot" now mostly occupied by a playground and athletic field but also a garden and nice ironwork fences that are very New York.

The Parks Department website explains the name "Colgate Close" and describes this fanciful design on the backstop as Cubby the Catcher. A Google search for "Cubby the Catcher" (in quotes) turns up exactly one result: the Parks Department website. Cubby's origin, then – or at least the derivation of his name – will have to remain obscure, at least for now.

The bigger mystery of Colgate Close Park is John Cloes (later spelled Close), whom the Parks Department knows only as "an early pioneer in New York." Financier James Boorman Colgate (1818-1904) was a founder and president of the New York Gold Exchange. In a money- and trade-centric city like New York, that's plenty to get a street and park named after you. But as for Cloes, the "early pioneer" who gave his name to Close Avenue and now Colgate Close Park, a quick web search doesn't help us much.

Also, I object to the redundant phrase "early pioneer." Just saying.

All photos © Jon Sobel, Critical Lens Media