Pugsley Creek Park

Watching The Addams Family reruns back in the '70s, I used to think "Pugsley" a funny name. No doubt it was chosen – over the too sexual-sounding "Pubert," as it happens – for its hint of humor. However, as far as I know, there's nothing especially funny about the Pugsley family that is today memorialized by Pugsley Creek and Pugsley Creek Park in the Soundview section of the Bronx, just north of Clason Point Park.

I suppose back then the Pugsleys might have been the "authorities" and had a sign much like this one, which greets visitors to the neighborhood with a strange sort of welcome:

In the 1800s the Pugsleys used the creek to bring supplies to their farm. (The waterway ran further inland back then.) What was once Cromwell's Creek – after John Cromwell (a cousin of Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell) who had settled neighboring Castle Hill Neck around 1650 – became known as the more lighthearted, but sadly less alliterative, Pugsley Creek.

Of course the history goes much further back than the Lord Protector's time over in the mother country. The Parks Department website informs us that archaeologists discovered "primitive" stone tools near the head of the creek, tools presumably used by the Siwanoy Indians in the workshop mentioned in this 2001 NYC School Construction Authority report. The Siwanoy village was near the tip of Castle Hill Neck.

(Note: "Siwanoy" is likely just a loose term that European settlers came to apply to Indigenous populations of the area. There's no definitive evidence of a distinct group by that name. So what did the villagers call themselves? Maybe just "us over here." I suppose we'll never know.)

The entrance to the park from the south is marked by a sign denoting Snakapins Path. (Snakapins was the Indigenous people's name for nearby Clason's Point or for their settlement there.) While it may have once been a pathway used by the "Siwanoy," today's it's a pleasant and uncrowded bikeway. We encountered only one party of bikers and one or two pedestrians during our hike. Along the way the path morphs into the Wappinger Trail, named for the Indigenous people of today's Westchester.

Someone apparently wants to lay a claim to the place.

The path intersects the water near the creek's terminus.

The water level was very low here on this hot July day. I suppose this stretch didn't contain any fish because we saw no water birds here. (Stay tuned for the next post, though.)

The path bends around the creek and continues along its opposite side into Castle Hill Point Park, the subject of the next post.

All photos © Critical Lens Media

Clason Point Park and Waterfront Garden

Thanks to the NYC Ferry it's now easy for people from around the city to visit some of the parks on the Bronx coast that aren't otherwise easy to get to by public transportation. A few years ago, for example, a visit to Soundview Park required a long subway ride followed by a walk through a neighborhood that seemed saddled with infrastructural neglect.

The ferry's new Soundview line terminates at Clason Point Park (the name is pronounced "Clawson") at the tip of a small peninsula that houses the tiny neighborhood of Harding Park. To quote Forgotten New York, Harding Park is "the maze of little unnamed streets and bungalows found along Bronx River, Leland, Gildersleeve and Cornell Avenues in the southwest sector of Clason Point...[I]t seems independent from the rest of the Bronx, since its street pattern is different and it's cut off by water from the rest of the borough. It's very, very odd."

As exploratory documentarians demonstrate year after year, New York City encompasses many "very, very odd" places and things. Clason Point Park itself, though, isn't one of them.

As in many places on July 5, the grounds were littered with fireworks debris. But the park's virtues, like its swathes of grass shaded by trees, remained evident.

Viewed from beneficial angles, the winding paths and healthy-looking trees shading clean benches and jumbles of grey rocks make the park an appealing waterfront green space...

...though not one for swimming.

A more recent Forgotten New York post – by Sergey Kadinsky, author of Hidden Waters of New York City (a book any NYC explorer who's interested in history will find valuable) – recounts how Clason Point once housed an amusement park, and later a sort of mini-Catskills resort called Shore Haven that catered to the Bronx's then-substantial Jewish population.

Back in the 1940s, revelers would have had a nice view of the Whitestone Bridge connecting the Bronx with Queens, though not the newer Throgs Neck Bridge, which you can see beyond the Whitestone today.

Information about Isaac Clason, other than that he was a Scottish landowner and merchant, is hard to find. The "point" that bears his name has an interesting history, though. Here's one awful detail recounted in the AIA Guide, as quoted in a 2000 New York Times article by Philip Lopate: "Tragedy came in 1924 when a freak wind squall blew down the Clason Point Amusement Park's Ferris wheel...killing 24."

The park's upper portion winds northward along the eastern edge of the peninsula. It's not hard to imagine a good-sized resort or amusement park on this large, flat, unused grassy field.

Continuing north through this quiet area of the park, we encountered only one other human, who appeared to be unhoused and was sleeping on the ground. (Not pictured.)

A tree full of delicious mulberries rewarded us on this hot, sweaty day of exploration.

Leaving the park, we wended our way to a nearby community garden called the Waterfront Garden. Its lush, fanciful landscaping and view of the East River (or Long Island Sound, if you prefer) welcomed us inside. So did a friendly local man who was passing by.

The garden is somehow affiliated with the New York Botanical Garden, and it shows.

Next up: onward to Pugsley Creek Park.

All photos © Critical Lens Media

Pier 26, Hudson River Park

Recent visits to Steeplechase Pier in Coney Island and the brand-new Little Island in Hudson River Park reminded me that I hadn't talked about another notable new development along the Hudson: Pier 26.

This ecological park, jutting far out into the river off Hudson River Park, opened in September 2020. It endeavors to give an inkling of the natural ecology of the riverbank as Henry Hudson would have encountered it 400 years ago, before European settlement and centuries of industrial development turned the lower banks of the great estuary into a mostly artificial environment.

A walk down the pier takes you through five ecological zones: woodland forest, coastal grassland, maritime scrub, rocky tidal zone, and the river itself.

These environments are not reproduced, but suggested with native plants and infrastructure.

For example, planting a full-fledged woodland forest might not have been practical, but there are some nice young trees among the multitudinous vegetation.

The pier is designed for active visits, leisurely walks – and just plain leisure.

The Tide Deck at the far end of the pier was designed to flood with the daily tide. (Remember, the Hudson River is actually an estuary, not a river.) So you can only visit it on a guided tour.

But you can walk over it and look down.

A look south offers a familiar sight:

Across the river to the west rises the skyline of Jersey City. Most of these buildings didn't exist when I lived there in the 1980s.

When you're finished exploring Pier 26, you could relax at another new New York City attraction, City Vineyard. I haven't been there, but I have fond memories of its late cousin, the old location of NYC's City Winery. (At the new one, live music is back, unlike when I took these photos back in October 2020.)

Or take a walk down my favorite part of Hudson River Park, the sort-of-hidden Tribeca Native Boardwalk, which winds among gardens of native plants. Can you spot the humans secluding themselves in the next two images?

Educational goals aside, Pier 26 is handsomely laid out and landscaped, a beautiful addition to Hudson River Park.

All photos © Critical Lens Media

Elevated Acre

A garden oasis in the sky in Lower Manhattan's financial district? Just so.

You get to the Elevated Acre at 55 Water St. by a mysterious-looking stairway or escalator you'd never guess leads to a pastoral platform amid the towers of high finance.

In the dark days of the coronavirus pandemic, over the winter when nothing much was blooming and almost no one was working downtown, a few folks still elevated themselves here for a break or a think or a stroll.

While the big field of turf lacks charisma...

...the paths and benches offer nice spots to either squirrel yourself away...

...or take in the river view.

We owe the existence of the Elevated Acre to zoning regulations that allowed developers to build higher in return for including a public plaza on the property. The platform was completed in the early 1970s, the present design in 2005. Untapped Cities reports that in "normal" times there's a restaurant and a summer beer garden, along with scheduled events.

As the website of co-designer Marvel Designs has it, the platform offers "panoramic views of the Brooklyn Bridge and New York Harbor amidst lush seasonal flora and under the plaza’s beacon tower" and is "designed to host a wide range of year-round programs from an ice-rink to outdoor amphitheater and wedding receptions."

The beacon tower doesn't look like much by day, but at night it lights up, announcing the Elevated Acre to passing barges and ferries. (The glass company that outfitted the tower has some nice photos of the tower illuminated.)

All photos © Critical Lens Media

Steeplechase Pier, Coney Island

If "resilient" can mean "being rebuilt again and again," then the Pat Auletta Steeplechase Pier at Coney Island is resilient as advertised (on the sign at its entrance). Its most recent iteration opened Oct. 2, 2013 after Hurricane Sandy had destroyed it the previous year. But the history of this thousand-foot (and now T-shaped) pier goes back to 1904, seven years after Coney Island's famed Steeplechase Park had first opened. Since then the pier has died and lived again, died and lived again.

Steeplechase Pier lies just off the site of the Parachute Jump, an iconic relic that's often thought of as the only remnant of the Steeplechase amusement park. But the pier has been here, in one form or another, much longer than that long-retired thrill ride, and is four times as long as the Parachute Jump is high. (Historical note: The Jump was actually built for the 1939 World's Fair, transported to Steeplechase in 1941, decommissioned when the amusement park shut down in the '60s, and preserved to this day through sheer community will).

Above: the Parachute Jump as seen from Steeplechase Pier
Above: looking west from the start of Steeplechase Pier
Above: looking west from a little farther out on Steeplechase Pier

On our recent visit, one of the first sites on the pier itself was a "Prayer Station" making an attempt to display an ecumenical or even nondenominational spirit.

Much more lively was a percussion party a little farther out.

The main activity at the far end of the pier is fishing. The designers of the present pier provided some fishing infrastructure along with a separate raised walkway so promenaders can not only view the wide ocean but watch the fisherfolk without getting in their way.

One fisherman (not pictured) landed a skate just as we approached. (I think this is a skate and not a stingray – I don't see a stinger.) Displaying it on the plastic-wood floorboards for the gathering crowd to photograph and admire, he explained that he would not eat the charismatic creature but would throw it back, which he proceeded to do after a bit of a struggle to get the hook out of its mouth. He rhapsodized about how the catch was a gift from God, provided so that we all could appreciate the bountiful variety of life in the ocean right here off the teeming beaches of Coney Island. It's a nice thought – maybe he was inspired at the Prayer Station.

Steeplechase Pier became the Pat Auletta Steeplechase Pier in honor of a man known as "Mr. Coney Island" or the "Mayor of Coney Island" (and father of writer Ken Auletta). From the 1940s to the '60s Pat Auletta and his wife Nettie ran Pat's Sporting Equipment on Stillwell Avenue, then managed the Abe Stark Skating Rink for NYC Parks until the 1980s. Auletta's 1991 New York Times obituary bears a correction that's so New York: "Because of an editing error, an obituary in some editions yesterday about Pat V. Auletta, a member of Community Board 13 in New York City, referred incorrectly to Coney Island. It is in Brooklyn, not Queens."

It sure is!

All photos © Critical Lens Media