Hudson River Park
Hudson River Park is a waterfront park on the North River that extends from 59th Street south to Battery Park in the New York City borough of Manhattan. The park, a component of the Manhattan Waterfront Greenway, stretches and comprises, making it the second-largest park in Manhattan after the Central Park.
Hudson River Park is a joint state and city collaboration, but is organized as a New York State public-benefit corporation. Plans for the park were devised in the late 1980s following the cancellation of the Westway plan, which had proposed an interstate highway to replace the deteriorated West Side Elevated Highway. The park was established in 1998 and was built in several stages in conjunction with the construction of the surface-level West Side Highway. Additional phases were completed between the 2000s and the 2020s.
Hudson River Park connects many other recreational sites and landmarks. It runs through the Manhattan neighborhoods of Lower Manhattan, Greenwich Village, Chelsea, and Midtown West. The park connects two other waterfront parks: Riverside Park to the north and The Battery to the south.
Bicycle and pedestrian paths, spanning the park north to south, open up the waterfront for recreational use. The park includes tennis and soccer fields, batting cages, children's playground, dog run, and many other features. The parkland also incorporates several rebuilt North River piers along its length, formerly used for shipping.
Management
The Hudson River Park Trust is a partnership between New York State and New York City charged with the design, construction and operation of the four-mile Hudson River Park. The trust operates on a premise of financial self-sufficiency, supporting the staff as well as the operations and maintenance of the park through revenue generated within the park by rents from commercial tenants, fees, concession revenues, grants and donations. Capital funding has historically come primarily from the state, the city, and Federal budget appropriations. The trust is guided by a thirteen-member Board of Directors. There is also a fifty-member Advisory Council which plays an integral role in the park planning process. The management team is headed by Noreen Doyle, President and CEO. In 2017, the trust had operating expenses of $31.38 million and a level of staffing of 117 people.History
Land use
Prior to colonization of New Netherland, Native Americans lived on the shore of the southernmost portion of the Hudson River—where the park now is—seasonally, in a place called Sapohanikan. It was near the present-day intersection of Gansevoort Street and Washington Street. It was probably a hunting and fishing site, and Native Americans probably used the oyster reefs on the shore as well; the newly settled Europeans also began using these reefs.Later, oyster barges, selling high volumes of oysters, opened along the Hudson River shore, within several North River piers. Because of their quantity, they were often sold at cheap prices, and many immigrants to New York City relied on eating oysters. These oyster barges closed when the oysters died due to overfarming and to water pollution resulting from the shore's industrialization.
In 1807, the first steamboat in passenger operation, Clermont, was launched from present-day Pier 45, in the West Village. The first successful boat of its kind in the United States, it helped give Robert Fulton control over all steamboat operations on the rest of the Hudson River. The English White Star Line, including the Olympic and the Titanic, had a terminal at Pier 59. The competing Cunard Line was located at Pier 54, and this location received survivors of the sinking of the Titanic rescued by the Carpathia in 1912, as well as being the departure point for the ill-fated Lusitania, which was sunk by a German U-boat in 1915.
By the late 19th century, the Slaughterhouse District was created along the Hudson River shoreline in present-day Hell's Kitchen. A stretch of 39th Street between 11th and 12th Avenues was called Abattoir Place until the early 20th century. In the 1870s, tunnels to herd cattle under 12th Avenue were created at 34th and 38th Streets. The cattle industry in this area continued through the 1960s.
Conception and construction
What is now Hudson River Park emerged from the failed 1970s and 1980s Westway proposal to replace the dilapidated West Side Highway with an interstate highway connecting the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel, the Holland Tunnel, and the Lincoln Tunnel. The right-of-way of the new six-lane highway would have demolished the then-existing West Side piers and replaced them with of landfill, through which the new highway would have tunneled. In addition to of development, the plan also had provisions for of continuous parkland to be laid on top of the highway, including four waterside parks and a tree-lined promenade and bike path on the waterfront. Around 90% of the funds for the project were to come from federal aid. The project was abandoned on September 19, 1985, due to political as well as environmental objections, particularly concerns in Congress over excessive cost as well as concerns by federal courts over the Hudson River striped bass habitat. Much of the estimated $2 billion in federal funds allocated for the Westway was diverted to mass transit. Plans for the park still persisted, with $265 million of the park's proposed $500 million cost having been secured by 1990. The park would be built on all of the land not occupied by the future West Side Highway, as well as the remaining piers.During the 1980s and 1990s, there were plans to redevelop many of the old piers as parkland. A new plan for development was announced in 1992 by then-Governor Mario Cuomo and then-Mayor David Dinkins, targeting Pier 76 opposite the Javits Center, Chelsea Piers, and Pier 40 as key locations for commercial development that would support the park. The 1992 memorandum also created the Hudson River Park Corporation, quickly renamed the Hudson River Park Conservancy, a government agency composed of members appointed by the governor and mayor.
Construction of the Chelsea Piers complex began in July 1994, opening in stages beginning in May 1995. Legislation creating the park was signed in September 1998 by Governor George Pataki, combining land owned by New York State and the city. Both halves were leased to the joint entity now known as the Hudson River Park Trust. The plan also guaranteed that half of two commercial locations, Piers 40 and 76, and all of Pier 84, would be reserved for parkland. The park was initially expected to be completed by 2003, with construction costs estimated at $300 million. The first complete section of the park started construction in 1998 and opened in 2003 in Greenwich Village.
Afterward, construction stalled, and much of the park remained incomplete. Clinton Cove opened in 2005, and Piers 66 and 84 opened the next year. Half of the park was complete by 2009, and as of 2015, seventy percent of the park has been finished, at a cost of nearly $500 million.
2010s and 2020s
Parts of the Hudson River Park remained without power in the months after Hurricane Sandy in October 2012, due to damaged electrical cables. As a result, the Hudson River Park temporarily limited hours after nightfall in the park. Before Hurricane Sandy, the park's paths alongside the river remained open until 1 am EDT. After Hurricane Sandy, the park worked to return to normal operating hours once they restored power to affected areas. Full power was restored in June 2014, 20 months after the storm, with total damages accumulating to $32 million. By June 2013, the Hudson River Park trust was in debt. A bill passed in June 2013 ended maintenance of a section of the park in Battery Park City, as well as the purchase of liability insurance, which would give $750,000 in savings to the park. However, the park was to run a $8.5 million deficit for fiscal year 2014. To further ameliorate the debt, the bill provided for the trust to make passengers pay to board sightseeing cruise ships in the park. Finally, the bill allowed the park to sell air rights across the street from the park, specifically St. John's Terminal across from Pier 40. In addition, Pier 40, which would have garnered large profits for the park, would cost more than $100 million to renovate.In 2014, the Hudson River Park Trust planned a river-ecology research center at Pier 26 in Tribeca, to be run by Clarkson University. In October 2017, as part of a plan to reactivate the Pier 54 project, Andrew Cuomo agreed to complete the remaining 30% of the park.
The state's first memorial to the LGBT community was dedicated in June 2018, at Hudson River Park near the Christopher Street Pier. The memorial, an abstract work by Anthony Goicolea, consists of nine boulders arranged in a circle. The memorial honors the victims of the 2016 Orlando nightclub shooting, most of whom were gay. The Pier 54 project, later renamed Little Island, opened in May 2021. Additionally, in early 2020, Cuomo announced that he would expand the park onto Pier 76, which contained a New York City Police Department tow pound that was in the process of closing. Pier 76 opened on June 9, 2021, under the existing canopy of the former tow pound. In 2022, Manhattan borough president Mark Levine proposed converting one lane of the West Side Highway into a bike path due to heavy traffic on Hudson River Park's bike lane. Gansevoort Peninsula opened in the West Village in late 2023. By then, the park attracted 17 million annual visitors and had spurred commercial development along the West Side, including the IAC Building and a redevelopment of St. John's Terminal.