Governors Island: The Hills

Readers of this blog know there are hundreds of outdoor activities and places to explore throughout the five boroughs of New York City. One thing hard to come by, though, is a place to climb.

One poor woman was so desperate she resorted to scaling the base of the Statue of Liberty. (I know, it was a political protest. But look at the form her activism took, and don't tell me she wasn't a climber at heart.)

Aside from Lookout Hill in Prospect Park, and a few stretches of path in Inwood Hill Park and Wave Hill, the best most NYC kids can do is clamber up Central Park's schist outcroppings.

That is, until the masterminds of Governors Island opened the Governors Island Hills in July 2016.

Back in August 2015 when we last visited, the project was still under construction, the hills inaccessible mounds of dirt crowned by backhoes.

Today visitors to this still-evolving former military base in New York Harbor can climb to their heart's content.

The easy, long route up the highest hill, called Outlook, follows a gently sloping, switchbacked, ADA-compliant paved path.

Naturally, I prefer the rock scramble, built from the remains of an old sea wall.

I spotted some kids loping up one of the other hills. I'm not sure whether this is the one called Discovery or the one called Grassy. Whichever, that's the kind of fun I always want to have.

There are actually four hills: Grassy, Discovery, Outlook, and Slide. Slide provides the most organized fun, with slides of various heights and widths. The age limit is supposed to be 14, but we saw plenty of young adults partaking of the joys of gravity. Fourteen seems a pretty silly cutoff, anyway. Many kids that age have reached adult size. So what's the point of allowing a 14-year-old but not a 15-year-old?

In addition to the satisfaction of simply getting oneself up to 70 feet above sea level – something you otherwise can't do in the vicinity of Lower Manhattan without being inside a building – you're rewarded with a great view of the harbor and skyline from the peak of Outlook.

 

When you go, though, don't just take in the vista. Also give a thought to the brains that went into the construction.

The plan was to build Outlook out of rubble from the buildings that used to be here, notably Building 877, supplemented by dirt and gravel barged in from upstate quarries.

 

But the result would have been too heavy for the 100 or so feet of "loose, crappy soil" beneath to support, as the project's geotechnical engineer, David Winter, told Curbed in a fascinating article on The Hills and Dutch landscape architect Adriaan Geuze's whole Olmsted-inspired design of the Governors Island project. (The title of the article: "On Governors Island, the World's Smartest Hill.")

To solve the weight problem, they considered using foam. But that just seemed, well, too unnatural, and would have been hard to work with given the setting.

Instead, Outlook is bolstered by Mechanically Stabilized Earth (MSE) – fill layered in plastic fabric (see this Informed Infrastructure article for photos and more technical information) – and lightweight volcanic pumice. Buried electronics keep an eye out for unhealthy settling, and irrigation and drainage are built in.

But to look at – and to climb – you wouldn't know any of it.

All photos © Jon Sobel, Critical Lens Media

Brooklyn Bridge Park South

So much has been added to Brooklyn Bridge Park over the past few years that a fresh visit reveals a whole new park – or really a string of small parks.

For a good view of them from above, see my recent post about the Brooklyn Heights Promenade. For a snapshot of Brooklyn Bridge Park's older, northern section four years ago, take a look back in time. To delve inside the newer stretches, read on.

The park now encompasses Pier 6, Pier 5, Pier 2, and various tracts between. Pier 6 is also where Brooklynites can catch the Governors Island Ferry.

Parts of the park have been landscaped with so much greenery you could forget you're in the city – if not for the waterside and skyline views.

There's a lot for children and families here, and not one, not two, but three soccer fields on Pier 5.

But there's also plenty of green grass and peaceful spots for quieter adult pleasures. And lots more room to breathe than in the DUMBO section of the park, not mention at places like Coney Island.

For good measure, we headed to the northern section to see the park's newest art feature, Anish Kapoor's Descension whirlpool, at Pier 1, where it will remain until 10 September 2017.

All photos © Jon Sobel, Critical Lens Media

Governor's Island: Liggett Terrace and Hammock Grove

Like a giant utility belt that's just not that useful anymore, Liggett Hall bisects Governor's Island almost all the way across. The story goes that the municipal government was considering turning the island into a commercial airport, so in 1929 the army built Liggett Hall to cut the island in half and eliminate any possibility of a landing strip.

In any case, it sure is a long building – said to have been the longest in the world at the time, and designed by McKim, Mead, and White, architects of the Morgan Library, the Boston Public Library, the original Penn Station, and many other famous edifices.

West of Liggett Hall lies Liggett Terrace, newly swirled with paths through beds of greenery and flowers; fountains that, perversely, weren't active on the crazy-hot day we visited; and a hedge maze with "hidden" sprinklers (also inactive).

Continue southwest down the narrower part of the island and you come to another new feature, Hammock Grove, named for Lt. Col. Edmund C. Hammock, a hero of the U.S. First Army during the Third War of Attrition.

Sorry, I'm getting word that's not correct. It's called Hammock Grove because it has, well, hammocks. Fifty of them.

I've never had much success with hammocks. When I get into one, it usually tosses me out onto the ground. So I was content to walk through the grove and merely observe the hammock-hangers-on wherever they appeared.

At the far end of the grove you get a view of The Hills. Scheduled for completion in 2016, these four man-made hills made of recycled construction and fill material will "tower" 25 to 70 feet above sea level. From the tallest you'll get a "360-degree panorama of the Statue of Liberty, New York Harbor and the Lower Manhattan skyline," promises the "Future" page of the Governor's Island website.

I like the whole idea of creating artificial hills on top of an already artificial land mass. This whole end of the island was created during the construction of the New York City subway system. Four centuries ago the Dutch found an island half this size. With no hills.

Governor's Island: Nolan Park

After my first visit to Governor's Island five years ago, I worried that all the development being planned might ruin it. I liked the charm of its "unfinished, half-ghost-town state."

Since that time, big decisions have been made – it seems there isn't going to be an NYU campus, for one thing – and a great deal of work has been done. There are now so many different accessible outdoor areas and facilities that each deserves its own blog post. And as the ferry service expands for the first time this summer to include weekdays, ruination doesn't seem to be in the cards.

Nolan Park is a grassy area shaded by elm trees on the old part of the island, the part that isn't landfill – the part the first Dutch settlers found in 1611 and planted themselves upon before venturing onto the big scary island across the harbor to the north (i.e. Manhattan) a few years later to found New Amsterdam.

I'm beginning my informal Governors Island parks survey at Nolan Park because a concert here by the Imani Winds was the immediate excuse for our most recent excursion to the island.

The park is lined with 19th century officers' homes from the time when Governors Island was a military installation – actually a military town with some 40,000 residents.

Nolan Park is named for one of those officers, Major General Dennis E. Nolan, Commander of the United States First Army. Wikipedia explains that among other accomplishments he "distinguished himself by heading the first modern American military combat intelligence function during World War I." In 1933 he became the First Army's commander, stationed at Fort Jay, Governors Island.

We visited other parts of Governors Island that same day, which I'll described in upcoming posts. In the meantime, I recommend The Bowery Boys' recent podcast about the island.