Stuyvesant Cove Park, Rebuilt for Flood Resilience

Stuyvesant Cove has been completely rebuilt since our first visit all the way back in 2010, the first year of this blog. The new Stuyvesant Cove Park is a climate-resilient riverfront park proudly sporting the city's new floodgates and walls. The idea is to prevent what happened during Superstorm Sandy in 2012 from ever happening again, and things are looking pretty decent from today's Stuyvesant Cove.

Entering from the southern end, it easy to see the contrast between the broken-up pavement of the old walkway and the fresh surface of the new Stuyvesant Cove Park.

The next time Poseidon flies into a rage, Floodgate Lucky 13 will save the day, sliding along a track to close up this part of the wall.

I expect little creatures like the one below will have hopped to safety in time. Animals will probably be better weather predictors than whatever shreds of the U.S. government remain by the time the next big storm surge threatens the Mid-Atlantic region.

The sunflowers may not be so lucky. If the water doesn't get 'em, I guess the wind will.

Architecture won't be most people's main reason for visiting Stuyvesant Cove Park. But up at the north end of the park, you'll be struck by the Solar One Environmental Education Center's new home, which includes a performance venue. Solar One's website says that "the Center will be an education destination for thousands of NYC public school children who participate in our Green Design Lab programs each year." The organization has been on site for years, but the built environment here is all new.

One thing almost impossible to find here in the park proper is shade. But the bikers, runners, and relaxers we encountered on our hot-day visit in late September 2025 didn't seem to mind.

A couple of NYC Ferry boats pulled in and out of the Stuyvesant Cove dock during our jaunt.

Past the southern end of the park, the path continues. Eventually it will, presumably, link up with John V. Lindsay East River Park to the south, including the section recently elevated and rebuilt, like Stuyvesant Cove, for climate resilience. Approaching Stuyvesant Cove Park from the southern pathway gives you a good look at the curve of the river, the ferry dock, and in the distance, the United Nations.

There are very few remnants of the old Cove. One is the outcropping visible in this video, which still causes splashy disruptions in the rough waters of the East River.

When those waters rise with the next storm surge, we'll see how well the new floodgates protect the residents and businesses of Manhattan's East Side.

All photos © Oren Hope

James Madison Plaza

A stone's throw from the Manhattan side of the Brooklyn Bridge and the odd new entity called Gotham Park, there's a triangle called James Madison Plaza, along (no surprise) Madison Street. The name "James Madison Plaza" actually combines two nearby street names, Madison Street and St. James Place.

Madison Street got its name back in 1826 when the Bancker family requested the city change the name from Bancker Street because the neighborhood had gotten less desirable, thanks at least in part to a typhus outbreak, as Ephemeral New York relates. One notable nearby house of not-so-great repute was No. 47-49, which in the first half of the 19th century became a venue for a sport called rat baiting. Fighting dogs were loosed into a ring full of captured rats, with humans betting on which dog could kill the most vermin.

Also interestingly, 49 Madison survives, sandwiched between two newer, much bigger apartment buildings.

Rats are still on our minds, of course. Just observe the trash can in James Madison Plaza. Come to think of it, it's sort of surprising that Mayor Adams, the great anti-rat crusader, hasn't thought to revive the wholesome pastime of rat baiting.

The city acquired the land in 1964 and developed it in the late 1970s, planting trees and installing planters. A restoration in 2013 included today's most prominent feature in the little Chinatown park: a polished granite globe, situated in a fountain and turnable by hand (supposedly. I didn't try, seems a smidgen unsanitary.) The sculpture nods to "the international influences of the Chinatown community," according to the contemporary press release, but there's no mention of whose idea or design manifested in the globe, whose polish has somewhat faded over the intervening years.

Also part of the restoration and associated with the fountain are "flowing ribbons of granite pavement."

As in many NYC open spaces, police presence is prominent. Often one sees tall, bright NYPD spotlights, ready to light up at night and shine down to deter wrongdoers.

Rats, like human miscreants, prefer darkness, so maybe the lights help keep them out of the park too. Of course, NYC rodents aren't known for bashfulness. But on my walk-through, on a sunny day in summer, nobody was visibly scavenging except the "rats of the air." (No offense, pigeons. I know we bred you in the first place.)

"Nobody here but us pigeons."

All photos © Oren Hope

Gotham Park

Brooklyn has Brooklyn Bridge Park. Why shouldn't the Manhattan side of the famous span have a park too? Now it does. As planned, on completion Gotham Park will be "nine acres of joy, discovery and wonder." Quite a claim.

But Gotham Park is a strange beast. Hiding under the bridge's ramps and not really connected to any particular neighborhood (unless you count the great gated compound of 1 Police Plaza as a neighborhood – technically this is Chinatown, I guess, but you wouldn't know it), the new park is not a creature of the NYC Department of Parks and Recreation.

Instead, it's the brainchild of the New York Department of Transportation, Trinity Church, two Community Boards, and a nonprofit, with support from the mayor's office.

At the inland end there's an enclave for passive recreation. This is all part of what was once, and can now be again, known as The Arches.

Crossing to the area jutting towards the East River, you find a long banked wall perfect for skateboarders, and a fairly wide brick plaza adjoining the arches themselves. Those arches, according to the master plan, will house additional facilities for the community, including a library branch and a museum.

The facilities available now include basketball, pickleball, and, for some reason, shuffleboard.

Sometimes a bit of whimsical art is just what you need, especially right beside a great big police headquarters.

I've been to well over 300 parks in the course of writing this blog, and this is certainly one of the weirder ones. Unusual location. Unusual layout (determined by the unusual location). Interesting choice of facilities. And an unusual genesis. It's an oddball all right.

A park from an alternate universe?

Still, any place that gets skaters off the sidewalks is all right by me! Welcome back, Brooklyn Bridge Banks.

Also always welcome: touches of whimsy.

All photos © Oren Hope

Luther Gulick Park

On my recent walk from the F train to check out the new elevated section of East River Park by the Williamsburg Bridge, I passed a small neighborhood park I'd been unaware of. And I admit that the first thing that caught my eye about Luther Gulick Park were the bathrooms, set in a friendly, modern structure.

This 1.6-acre Lower East Side park has a playground and courts for basketball and handball.

But it's also a pretty nice place for a break from the urban landscape. The park has well-maintained tree stands and a looping path. In fact, it received a design award from the American Society of Landscape Architects in 2021. And just this year, Luther Gulick Park was cited as an example of best practices for designing family-friendly spaces in a report from the New York City Public Design Commission.

I assume the ping-pong tables, and maybe the nice bathroom facilities too, were part of the park's $10 million renovation in 2009–10. That work, according to the press release, "transformed the mostly asphalt site into a lush green park that addresses the needs of the community." The renovation was part of Mayor DeBlasio's Community Parks Initiative.

But who was Luther Gulick? Funny you should ask, because this may be the only New York City park honoring two different people with the same name.

The elder Gulick, Luther Halsey Gulick, Jr. (1865-1918), was a medical doctor and an important figure in the invention of basketball. Also, his "belief in a trilogy of mind, body, and spirit inspired the YMCA’s inverted triangle design," explains the Parks Department. Gulick founded NYC's Public School Athletic League and, with his wife, founded the Camp Fire Girls in 1910, just a year after the foundation of the Boy Scouts. In the early 20th century he served as the head of physical training in NYC's public schools and as president of the American Physical Education Association.

His nephew, Dr. Luther Halsey Gulick (1892-1993), was also a national figure. In 1921 the New York City-based Bureau of City Betterment and its associated Training School of Public Service evolved into the National Institute of Public Administration, later the Institute of Public Administration (IPA). The organization focused on improving cities' administration, and was affiliated over the years with several universities, notably Columbia. A political scientist, the younger Luther Gulick headed the IPA for most of the period between 1921 and 1961.

Alongside its sports and playing areas, Luther Gulick Park has grass, trees, and – in my view, equally important for a New York City park – rocks. Rocks link a park, even if sometimes only symbolically, to the underlying body of the planet. Which city life detaches us from, to our detriment.

Vegetation around the edges gives the park a somewhat secluded feel.

Gravel is something people don't usually think about, but it's important to a lot of parks. Gravel takes you off the hard pavement that dominates our city lives. It's not grass, it's not alive, and it's not exactly soft. But it's not pavement either. Dirt-like, it feels like something natural. And it doesn't require the maintenance that grass does.

Before it was a park, the plot was part of the R. Hoe & Company headquarters. This manufacturer of printing presses and saws had a magnificent factory building.

The New York Public Library Digital Collections

They don't make them like that anymore.

But next time you're on the Lower East Side, whether visiting the newly elevated East River Park, shopping at Essex Market, or climbing the walls at the nearby climbing gym, spare a few minutes for under-appreciated Luther Gulick Park.

All photos © Oren Hope except where noted