Vietnam Veterans Plaza

The New York City Vietnam Veterans Memorial Plaza sits right off South Street and the Hudson River waterfront. Though located in the old part of the city, it's a modern-style plaza, constructed in the mid-1980s, renovated and expanded just after the turn of the century, and rededicated just after the trauma of 9-11.

The central feature is a muscular glass wall inscribed with excerpts from letters written home by American soldiers who were to die in the war.

If the writing appears hard to read, it's not poor photography. On the Plaza website, the Friends of the Vietnam Veterans Plaza admit that, renovation aside, the wall "needs serious attention" and "is now losing its luster and legibility." The group hopes to redesign and rebuild this poignant memorial.

In the meantime, with its steps, plaques, and angular elements, the plaza continues to evoke and memorialize the lives of the 1,741 New York City residents who died in that terrible war.

Roosevelt Triangle

New York City's Greenstreets program has turned many street-side and intersection locations into patches of green. These aren't really parks, but sometimes I come across one that, for one reason or another, seems to merit a mention here. One such is Roosevelt Triangle in Harlem, a space at the intersection of W. 125 St. and Morningside Ave. distinguished by the 5,500-pound bronze sculpture "Harlem Hybrid" by Richard Howe Hunt.

The Parks Department acquired the triangle and dedicated it to FDR in 1941. The Peter Putnam-Mildred Andrews Fund donated the sculpture in 1976, and Roosevelt Triangle was renovated in 2000.

The sculpture is said to resemble "a natural outcropping and also is inspired by the architecture and design of neighboring buildings," but elsewhere I've read that Hunt's work is entirely abstract. To me it looks (from the north side) like a stiletto-heeled shoe. (See the right side of the photo here.

With its constant tearing down and rebuilding, New York City is a difficult place to position an artwork to suggest the forms of nearby buildings. After all, a sculpture of this size and heft might last a lot longer than those buildings!

Regardless, stop by and admire it when you get a chance – perhaps in honor of Black History Month.

Riverside Park (North) and Grant's Tomb

I don't know if Riverside Park is the longest park in New York City, but it sure feels like it. I chronicled the southern section in an earlier post; my recent visit to Riverbank State Park provided a good chance to also explore the northern section of Riverside, where the first thing I spotted was this funny little house. Anyone know what it is?

The northern section of Riverside Park bucks back and forth between grit (tracks, for example) and green (like a curiously arched trunk of a plane tree).

You're never more than steps from the streets…

…but on the other side you'll find a number of opportunities to descend into…madness?

Walk south over this long, bleak stretch, which provides a great view of the big red electronic Fairway sign that's dangerously distracting to West Side Highway drivers…

…and your surroundings will eventually return to something resembling "park." An inviting detour led me to an ambiguous non-invitation:

But how can you not want to go through an inviting archway like this?

As you approach Grant's Tomb, the spaces open wider, with undulating stairways, stretches of grass, and even chess tables.

And there it is: Grant's Tomb, where Ulysses S. Grant and his wife lie in large wooden sarcophagi beneath a grand dome. The mausoleum's exterior is modeled after Mausoleus's tomb (that's where they get the word, in fact) in the ancient Greek city of Halicarnassus in Turkey. The memorial inside focusses on Grant's Civil War career rather than his later, less successful Presidency. A ranger/guide will answer your questions, or you can just wander the dark space, which contains very little actually: a map showing the sites of Grant's Civil War actions, banners of various companies that served under him, and on the lower level, circling the sarcophagi themselves, busts of other generals. Surrounding the grounds are whimsical benches designed by Pedro P Silva, an artist inspired by Antoni Gaudí.

Note: I've updated this post in reference to the comment below about the church in the photo.

Sakura Park

Uptown near Columbia University and just east of Grant's Tomb is a peaceful rectangle called Sakura Park, named after the cherry blossoms ("sakura" in Japanese) the bloom on a batch of trees Japan donated to the city a century ago. (No, you won't see any cherry blossoms in my photos. It's January.)

It's peaceful here partly because there isn't much in the park, really – a small pavilion at the north end, a Japanese lantern donated by the City of Tokyo in 1960, a playground with a sandbox, and the cherry trees themselves.

And, bearing no relation whatsoever to the Japanese theme, there is a statue by Gutzon Borglum (of Mount Rushmore fame) of the generously mustachioed Civil War general Daniel Butterfield, who is credited with composing the bugle call "Taps."

The park's only really striking feature is the exterior wall on its eastern side, an ivy-festooned copy of Kenilworth Abbey's wall in England, built in the 1930s as part of a park redesign by the Olmsted Brothers firm. Verdict: Park – nice. Wall – bravo.

Riverbank State Park

Ever since Riverbank State Park opened 20 years ago on the Hudson River, uniquely situated atop a sewage treatment plant, I've meant to pay a visit. But knowing that the park was most known for its athletic facilities, I didn't expect there'd be much of interest to report for this greenery-focused blog. Sure enough, Nature isn't the big reason to visit Riverbank. And yet, arriving on a misty and exceptionally mild January day, I had a fantastic time just walking around the grounds.

Yes, it's mostly an athletic complex. But with the 28 acres mostly deserted for the winter, the generous spread of sports facilities reminded me much more of ancient Olympia in Greece than of the grubby, uninviting blacktops of my un-athletic childhood. Beyond lofty, green, arched gates, the sweeping entry road crosses the roaring highway far below, on this foggy day providing a strangely sublime view of the New Jersey buildings reflected in the grey river.

After a long crossing you reach the park itself and if you stay to the right you'll find open spaces and picnic areas with nice riverside views. Here's the view north towards the George Washington Bridge:

And here's the Charles B. McAllister nosing its way into some sort of business:

Up in the park, the previous night's rain had left puddles in the brick walkways reflecting the bare trees of January:

While it's no Greek ruin, the Waterfront Amphitheatre furthered my sense of walking through a modern iteration of an ancient plan. The shapes at the top are more of those New Jersey building reflections in the Hudson River:

Outdoor swimming facilities speak more starkly when they're closed. This one echoes the shape of the amphitheatre too.

A few people were using the track or kicking around a soccer ball.

And I discovered that softball season can extend into the middle of the winter if the weather cooperates.

This garden was awaiting warmer days:

But these geese have their own calendar.

The busy facility here this time of year is the ice skating rink, which also has the park's most distinctive architectural feature in these arches:

In the park's early days, people reported nasty smells pervading the grounds, but evidently those problems have been fixed. Mostly it's easy to forget you're on top of a sewage treatment plant. An elevated section at the southern end felt like its own world, where kids were playing basketball, and the waterfront stretches on this lonely winter day felt truly peaceful. But back near the entrance, giant organ pipes loom high above everything else, attended by buses-in-waiting.

Wherever you walk in Manhattan, the hidden life of the city pulses beneath you, popping up here and there and now and then – when transformers explode in a cascade of lights during a superstorm, or where giant stacks watch over ballfields, gardens, grazing geese, chattering children, a cultural center, even a restaurant, as they do here at Riverbank State Park.

Hinton Park

A trip to the Louis Armstrong House Museum in Corona, Queens gave this explorer the chance to visit not only Park of the Americas (formerly Linden Park) and National Plaza (formerly Corona Plaza) but Hinton Park as well, a big rectangle just across the Grand Central Parkway from Citi Field, the fancy new home of the New York Mets. Nearby you'll find the Louis Armstrong School and the Louis Armstrong Playground.

No one was playing outdoor chess on this December day, but no matter the weather the compass never tires of pointing in every direction.

Most of the park's acreage is devoted to grassy baseball fields…

…which, you'd assume, would be entirely abandoned in the winter, but you'd be wrong.

Little parks with little character bordering on flavorless highways – that's a kind of identity, I suppose. Reverend George Warren Hinton park is named for a longtime pastor of the Corona Congregational Church, who died in 1969 – the same year the Mets won their first World Series, and long before the building of Citi Field inspired the team to…well, to continue to not be very good. Sigh.

Maybe one day the guys in the photo above can do something about that.

A final note: While it's true that Hinton Park is unremarkable, even lacking anything in the way of a surrounding neighborhood to lend it character, it's also true that walking towards it along 37th Avenue over slightly hilly terrain, passing streets jutting off in irregular directions, I could detect past ages when this land was entirely rural. Imaginative overreach? I don't think so. Try it and see if you agree.

Park of the Americas and Corona Plaza/National Plaza

Park names are a jumble in the bustling part of Queens known as Corona, a neighborhood I admit I'd previously known only from the line in Paul Simon's song "Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard." ("Goodbye Rosie, queen of Corona.")

Aiming for a park that's called Linden Park on all the maps, we disembarked from the No. 7 train at the stop just a block away called 103 St./Corona Plaza. That the Corona neighborhood should have a Corona Plaza seems to make perfect sense, but they have changed the name. To National Plaza. Because it's at National Street, I presume, but why the change? And why does the subway station still have the old name?

The plaza, a block-long triangle under the El, is part of the Park Department's Greenstreets program and on the day we visited it was hosting a busy marketplace at which, as in the rest of the neighborhood, we heard not a single word of English – Spanish only. Here's the plaza, whatever it's called.

And the naming confusion doesn't stop there. We're only just now getting to our actual destination, the onetime Linden Park.

For a reason I haven't been able to uncover, Linden Park has been renamed Park of the Americas, though the old sign has much more character than the generic new ones, as usual.

On this blustery December day an airplane cut through the agitated sky.

Was the name change to Park of the Americas related to the famous one that turned Manhattan's Sixth Avenue into Avenue of the Americas? That happened way back in 1945, but it never stuck – no one uses the new name except the post office. Were they trying again with a sneak attack at an obscure little park in Queens? Or could it be because there's a Linden Park in Brooklyn too?

As you can probably imagine, I don't go looking for flower photos in December. But if I happen upon a rosebush that's still putting out, how can I not take advantage, even if I do have to wait a while for a pause between gusts of wind?

A rose of another sort, this compass rose, points any way you want to go:

This old detailing on the facilities building continues our horticultural theme while evoking decorative times gone by, when Linden Park was still Linden Park.

Meanwhile, the playground displays a more modern flair. One good thing about winter is you can sometimes take a picture of a photogenic playground without anyone playing in it.

This one has appealing yellow squiggles and roofs.

Our visit to Linden Park/Park of the Americas was actually occasioned by a trip to the nearby Louis Armstrong House Museum, where Satchmo and his wife lived for decades and which is now operated as a museum – well worth visiting for music fans – by Queens College and a fundraising foundation. It gets a mention on this parks-focused blog because the Armstrongs turned the lot next door into a very nice garden, which now hosts concerts during the warmer months. Despite what I mentioned above, the museum tour is given in English, not Spanish – the only English we heard during our entire excursion to Corona, although the tour guide did mention that the neighborhood has a growing Asian population. In any case, Corona's ethnic makeup has certainly changed any number of times, even just since Lucille Armstrong decided to buy the house on 107th Street back in the early 1940s.

The museum has two paintings of Satchmo by Tony Bennett, who, speaking of name changes, signs his work "Benedetto." But regardless of ethnic changes or name changes of parks and plazas and singers and everything else, I hope we can all agree on one thing: Long live the Louis Armstrong House Museum. And its garden.