Clement Clarke Moore Park

As it's named for Clement C. Moore, author of the famous poem "A Visit from St. Nicholas" (popularly known as "'Twas the Night Before Christmas"), it's only fitting that the name of Clement Clarke Moore Park is itself a micro-poem:

Clement Clarke
Moore Park

There, you see? And who says a poem needs a verb?

Moore's family estate, which includes what is now the General Theological Seminary, was once a farm. Moore's grandfather, Captain Thomas Clarke, bought the property in 1750 and named it Chelsea, the name borne now by the whole neighborhood.

So I figure this little corner park, though mostly just playgrounds, is worth a mention because of that connection to the history of the area. Also, the surrounding trees sure do look nice in bloom in the spring.

Stopping by again on a warm summer afternoon, I found all the gates mysteriously closed, and all but one locked – yet there were people inside, a scattering of tiny children and their caretakers. Feeling unwelcome, I stayed outside the iron fence.

Just across Tenth Avenue you can see the High Line. But there's no serenity on the street. Although we're several blocks south of the tremendous Hudson Yards development now under construction, the traffic backups make Tenth a noisy crawl of trucks, buses and cars all day long.

It's hard to imagine the Hudson River is just one further block west. But maybe that's just what this spouting seal is doing. Though surrounded by colorful offerings left him by the local toddlers, he pines for the open water.

High Line, Northern Section

In September we happened to visit the High Line on the weekend the northernmost section opened to the public for the first time. Though the final transformation still awaited some finishing touches, the change from the overgrown trackbed we'd toured in the summer of 2013 to landscaped park was mostly complete.

We headed north and approached the westward turn at W. 30th Street:

Then the view opened up into the guts of the Hudson Yards development, where a whole new mini-city is going up on the West Side of Manhattan – right in the flood plain, of course. Though I don't suppose the waters of the next Superstorm Sandy will reach up to the height of the High Line's glorious bed.

We walked west towards the Hudson River:

The railyard will be completely covered over when Hudson Yards is complete.

The old elevated rail line swings north again for the High Line's final couple of blocks.

This newest and final section of the High Line has a different flavor from the rest. To the south the park spears between buildings and over city streets. Here it's open to the sky and the river.

Finally, the intrepid walker is treated to an excellent view of the picturesque Javits Center.

Now more or less complete, the High Line is and will remain one of New York City's most celebrated, and weirdest, parks.

Aqueduct Walk

Aqueduct Walk in The Bronx is part of the Old Croton Aqueduct Trail. The trail marks the path of the Croton Aqueduct, New York City's main source of drinking water for many years, completed in 1842 and used until the 1950s.

Considered as a park, the Walk resembles, conceptually, the High Line, the painfully popular converted elevated train track on the west side of Manhattan – old infrastructure adapted and repurposed.

The Old Croton Aqueduct starts north of the city in Croton, Westchester County. A gravity-fed tube built on ancient Roman principles and dropping 13 inches per mile, it runs for 41 miles, terminating in Manhattan where it deposited water in two reservoirs, one where Central Park's Great Lawn is today, the other where the main branch of the New York Public Library and Bryant Park are today.

The aqueduct's existence isn't evident along its whole path in today's New York. But up in the Bronx, you can walk right along a pretty sizable length of the historic water tunnel. The brick structure to the right in the first photo below is, I think, the aqueduct itself. In the second photo, I believe we are walking on top of it. If I'm wrong, I trust some kind reader will alert me.

About the Author

High Line of the Future

We dutifully covered the High Line some time ago. As the most heavily hyped new park in New York City, it needed only a brief post from me – you can find all the information and coverage your heart could desire with a quick internet search. After all, I was the college student who refused to read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy when everybody else I knew was reading it, precisely because everybody else was reading it. (Still haven't read that book.)

So I didn't feel the need to put up a big splashy post about the park everyone else was cooing and fawning over. But this summer, the Friends of the High Line is leading a series of walks on the unfinished northern portion of the elevated abandoned train line (above 30th St.), and that was a stop the Park Odyssey just had to make.

To begin with: I'm not going to hold you in suspense. The two photos below show the very end of the High Line, the northern tip where it curves east before joining up with the Hudson rail yards, which are soon to be covered over with a giant platform that will support yet another huge new development of apartment buildings for rich people.

Rather than the carefully selected and landscaped native flora with which the High Line folks have dressed up the completed sections of the park, these little trees and this undergrowth has cropped up here naturally over the years from seeds that blew here or dropped off the freight trains that used to chug up and down all day long.

And we're off.

When this section is parkified, you won't be walking on this track. It'll be pulled up, or mostly pulled up, and there'll be easily navigable paving and pretty flowers to admire. This is more fun though. And it's not as if nothing blooms there now.

Interestingly, although this stretch is open now only for guided tours, it's been decorated with an installation of site-specific sculptures by Carol Bove. The artworks are, in fact, the professed justification for the walks.

Even in the city, nature takes over when we let it:

Smaller but more evocative than the sculptures is this old switch box.

I've mentioned before that the High Line isn't actually very high. It is lofty enough to give you a decent pigeon's eye view of Long Island Railroad trains in the yard and Circle Line tour boats motoring by...

...but you (or at least I) can mistake a passing cruise ship for just another building if you don't take a second to remember where you are.

This new section will surely be a nice addition to the High Line park, but we will lose something when the ratty charm of the actual abandoned tracks is entirely ripped away and replaced by a more manufactured sort. The remaining walking tours this summer are sold out, but you can sign up to receive announcements about the fall.