Battery Park City
Battery Park City is a neighborhood and planned community at the southern tip of Manhattan in New York City. The neighborhood is situated along the Hudson River waterfront, and separated the Financial District and Tribeca by the West Side Highway. Directly to the south lies The Battery, formerly known as Battery Park, from which the neighborhood derives its name. Battery Park City is located on state-owned land managed by the Battery Park City Authority, a New York State public-benefit corporation.
Although primarily a residential neighborhood, there also are several office buildings, including the [|Brookfield Place] complex and 200 West Street. The neighborhood is also home to the Museum of Jewish Heritage, Stuyvesant High School, along with some hotels, street-level retail and restaurants. More than one-third of the area is parkland and public open space.
The land upon which Battery Park City is built was created in the 1970s by land reclamation on the Hudson River using over of soil and rock excavated during the construction of the World Trade Center, the New York City Water Tunnel, and certain other construction projects, as well as from sand dredged from New York Harbor off Staten Island.
Battery Park City is part of Manhattan Community District 1. It is patrolled by the 1st Precinct of the New York City Police Department.
Geography
Battery Park City is bounded on the east by West Street, which separates the area from the Financial District of Lower Manhattan. To the west, north, and south, the area is surrounded by the Hudson River. Battery Park City spans, with 36 acres used as parkland.The development consists of roughly five major sections. Traveling north to south, the first neighborhood has high-rise residential buildings, the Stuyvesant High School, a Regal Entertainment Group movie theater, and the [|Battery Park City branch] of the New York Public Library. It is also the site of the 463-suite Conrad New York luxury hotel, which has a ballroom and a conference center. Other restaurants located in that hotel, as well as a DSW store and a New York Sports Club branch, were closed in 2009 after the takeover of the property by Goldman Sachs. Former undeveloped lots in the area have been developed into high-rise buildings; for example, Goldman Sachs built a new headquarters at 200 West Street.
Nearby is Brookfield Place, a complex of several commercial buildings formerly known as the World Financial Center.
Current residential neighborhoods of Battery Park City are divided into northern and southern sections, separated by Brookfield Place. The northern section consists entirely of large, 20–45-story buildings, all various shades of orange brick. The southern section, extending down from the Winter Garden, which is located in Brookfield Place, contains residential apartment buildings such as Gateway Plaza and the Rector Place apartment buildings. In this section lies the majority of Battery Park City's residential areas, in three sections: Gateway Plaza, a high-rise building complex; the "Rector Place Residential Neighborhood"; and the" Battery Place Residential Neighborhood". These subsections contain most of the area's residential buildings, along with park space, supermarkets, restaurants, and movie theaters. Construction of residential buildings began north of the World Financial Center in the late 1990s, and completion of the final lots took place in early 2011. Additionally, a park restoration was completed in 2013.
History
Site and formation
Throughout the 19th century and early-20th century, the area adjoining today's Battery Park City was known as Little Syria with Lebanese, Greeks, Armenians, and other ethnic groups. In 1929, the land was the proposed site of a $50 million residential development that would have served workers in the Wall Street area. The Battery Tower project was left unfinished after workers digging the foundation ran into forty feet of old bulkheads, sunken docks, and ships.By the late-1950s, the once-prosperous port area of downtown Manhattan was occupied by a number of dilapidated shipping piers, casualties of the rise of container shipping which drove sea traffic to Port Elizabeth, New Jersey. The initial proposal to reclaim this area through landfill was offered in the early-1960s by private firms and supported by the mayor, part of a long history of Lower Manhattan expansion. That plan became complicated when Governor Nelson Rockefeller announced his desire to redevelop a part of the area as a separate project. The various groups reached a compromise, and in 1966 the governor unveiled the proposal for what would become Battery Park City. The creation of architect Wallace K. Harrison, the proposal called for a 'comprehensive community' consisting of housing, social infrastructure and light industry.
In 1968, the New York State Legislature created the Battery Park City Authority to oversee development. Rockefeller named Charles J. Urstadt as the first chairman of the authority's board that year. He then served as the chief executive officer from 1973 to 1978. Urstadt later served as the authority's vice chair from 1996 to 2010. The New York State Urban Development Corporation and ten other public agencies were also involved in the development project. For the next several years, the BPCA made slow progress. In April 1969, it unveiled a master plan for the area, which was approved in October. In early-1972, the BPCA issued $200 million in bonds to fund construction efforts, with Harry B. Helmsley designated as the developer. That same year, the city approved plans to alter the number of apartments designated for lower, middle and upper income renters. Urstadt said the changes were needed to make the financing for the project viable. In addition to the change in the mix of units, the city approved adding nine acres, which extended the northern boundary from Reade Street to Duane Street.
Landfill material from construction of the World Trade Center and other buildings in Lower Manhattan was used to add fill for the southern portion. Cellular cofferdams were constructed to retain the material. After removal of the piers, wooden piles and overburden of silt, the northern portion was filled with sand dredged from areas adjacent to Ambrose Channel in the Atlantic Ocean, as well as stone from the construction of Water Tunnel #3. By 1976, the landfill was completed. Seating stands for viewing the American Bicentennial "Operation Sail" flotilla parade were set up on the completed landfill in July 1976. Construction efforts ground to a halt in 1977, as a result of the city's fiscal crisis. That year, the presidential administration of Jimmy Carter approved mortgage insurance for 1,600 of the development's proposed units. In 1979, the title to the landfill was transferred from the city to the Battery Park City Authority, which financially restructured itself and created a new, more viable master plan, designed by Alex Cooper of Cooper, Robertson & Partners and Stanton Eckstut. By that time, only two of the proposed development's buildings had been built, and the $200 million bond issue was supposed to have been paid off the next year.
The design of BPC to some degree reflects the values of vibrant city neighborhoods championed by Jane Jacobs. The Urban Land Institute awarded the Battery Park City Master Plan its 2010 Heritage Award, for having "facilitated the private development of of commercial space, of residential space, and nearly of open space in lower Manhattan, becoming a model for successful large-scale planning efforts and marking a positive shift away from the urban renewal mindset of the time."
Construction and early development
During the late-1970s and early-1980s, the site hosted Creative Time's landmark Art on the Beach sculpture exhibitions. On September 23, 1979, the landfill was the site of an anti-nuclear rally attended by 200,000 people.In 1978, a temporary heliport operated by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey opened at the southern end of the landfill and was initially used by New York Airways helicopters providing scheduled service to Kennedy, LaGuardia and Newark airports. The helicopter landing pad later accommodated flights diverted from the Downtown Manhattan Heliport while that facility was closed for reconstruction from 1983 to 1987. The Battery Park City Heliport was located on the south side of the future site of the Museum of Jewish Heritage.
Construction began on the first residential building in June 1980. In April 1981, the New York State Urban Development Corporation issued a request for proposal, ultimately selecting six real-estate companies to develop over 1,800 residential units. The same year, the World Financial Center started construction; Olympia and York of Toronto was named as the developer for the World Financial Center, who then hired Cesar Pelli as the lead architect. By 1985, construction was completed and the World Financial Center saw its first tenants. The newly completed development was lauded by The New York Times as "a triumph of urban design", with the World Financial Center being deemed "a symbol of change".
File:Battery Park City North Cove.jpg|thumb|upright|left|North Cove Yacht Harbor, next to the World Financial Center
During early construction, two acres of land in the southern section of the Battery Park landfill was used by artist Agnes Denes to plant wheat in an exhibition titled Wheatfield – A Confrontation. The project was a visual contradiction: a golden field of wheat set among the steel skyscrapers of downtown Manhattan. It was created during a six-month period in the spring, summer, and fall of 1982 when Denes, with the support of the Public Art Fund, planted the field of wheat on rubble-strewn land near Wall Street and the World Trade Center site. Denes stated that her "decision to plant a wheatfield in Manhattan, instead of designing just another public sculpture, grew out of a long-standing concern and need to call attention to our misplaced priorities and deteriorating human values."
Throughout the 1980s, the BPCA oversaw a great deal of construction, including the entire Rector Place neighborhood and the river esplanade. It was during that period that Amanda Burden, later City Planning Department Director in the Bloomberg administration, worked on Battery Park City. During the 1980s, a total of 13 buildings were constructed. The Vietnam Veterans Plaza was established by Edward I. Koch in 1985. Constructed at a cost of $150 million and with a capacity for 2,700 students, Battery Park City became the new home of the Stuyvesant High School in 1992. During the 1990s, an additional six buildings were added to the neighborhood. By the turn of the 21st century, Battery Park City was mostly completed, with the exception of some ongoing construction on West Street.
Initially, in the 1980s, 23 buildings were built in the area. By the 1990s, 9 more buildings were built, followed by the construction of 11 buildings in the 2000s and 3 buildings in the 2010s. The Battery Park City Authority, wishing to attract more middle-class residents, started providing subsidies in 1998 to households whose annual incomes were $108,000 or less. By the end of the decade, nearly the entire landfill had been developed.