Union Square Park

This week I decided to take advantage of Saturday's perfect weather and dedicate all the posts to a few choice Manhattan parks. Enjoy!

More than a park, Union Square is really a second less-touristy version of Times Square (I'm using "touristy" only as a relative term here). With more subway and bus lines than would ever be practical, the park is perhaps one of the easiest to get to in all of New York – even Central Park doesn't have a single, definitive station. It's also worth mentioning how obscenely simple it is to get to Union Square from Brooklyn; For the vast majority of hipsters, this is their first stop in Manhattan.

As far as parks go, Union Square is pretty substandard. It's got some trees and a lawn, but its strength really lies in the open spaces, ridiculous street layout and the revolving door that is its retail environment.

The park itself is well-cared-for, but it's incredibly bland compared to many other spaces in the city. Consisting of a flat, symmetrical layout, its only major feature is the abundant seating – which is almost always unavailable either due to overcrowding, or a nauseating amount of urine.

Next you have all that free space. The north end and the south end of the park are wide open, unencumbered by trees, pathways, lamps, or anything else that you might find in a normal park. When nothing's going on, it's not uncommon to find these areas dominated by skateboarders or independent salespeople (read into that however you wish). On Saturdays the famous greenmarket claims most of the northern space. In the Winter, a very large, very maze-like holiday market offers up a plethora of chotchkies on the steps of the southern end of the Square.

The streets surrounding the park are a mess of renames and reroutes. For example: Park Ave South becomes Union Square East before splitting into Broadway (south) and 4th Avenue. Meanwhile, Broadway (north) turns onto 17th Street while Union Square West picks up where it left off, but only for 3 blocks after which it morphs into University Place. (See map for absolutely no clarification)

Around the perimeter of Union Square you'll find everything you need to live: Literature, music, shoes, baby supplies, entertainment, electronics, fair trade coffee beans, and any number of ATMs to feed into those businesses. Up until recently the Virgin Megastore anchored the corner of 14th St and 4th Avenue. A popular place to loiter while waiting for friends so you could be late to a movie, it's being replaced by a Nordstrom Rack outlet. Union Square is like a shopping mall with an unusual number of trees that you're forced to visit anytime you want to go to Brooklyn.

Stuyvesant Square

This week I decided to take advantage of Saturday's perfect weather and dedicate all the posts to a few choice Manhattan parks. Enjoy!

When the main feature of something is that it's bisected by 2nd Avenue, you know you're in for something incredibly dull. Unlike other parks in the area, which seem to dictate the flow of traffic to their liking, Stuyvesant Square may as well be two separate, yet identical parks. Offering little in the way of amenities, the park is mostly defined by its center fountains and ample seating. The admittedly-nice iron fence that surrounds both plots is claimed to be the second-oldest in the city. Each side offers some open space, which the eastern side opts to use as a dog run.

Trees and shade are not hard to find in Stuy Square. Thanks to a thick canopy of leaves, the sun only briefly breaks through near the twin flagpoles and fountains. While I'm a big fan of trees and shade, it feels really overdone here. The ground level feels dark, dreary and dead. While much of the park is landscaped with beautiful flowers and shrubs, the park would benefit from a little bit of grass. As it is, I can't remember anything other than dirt of paving stones.

The surrounding neighborhood is quaint and inviting, with Beth Israel Medical Center looming on the east and St. George's Church on the west. If you need to escape nature, the crowds and noise from 14th street echo just a block away. Maybe it's just me, but compared to many other Manhattan parks which have seen a revival in the past few years, Stuyvesant Square seems a bit unloved by the Parks Department.

Tompkins Square Park

This week I decided to take advantage of Saturday's perfect weather and dedicate all the posts to a few choice Manhattan parks. Enjoy!

With a rich history of riots and general disorder, the Tompkins Square Park of today stands in stark contrast to its previous incarnations. Really it's only been the last decade or two that the 10-acre plot has enjoyed a relatively calm existence. Like many other parks in the city, Tompkins was affected by the economic turmoil which engulfed New York in the 70's, causing it to go into a prototypical downfall. The seediness of Alphabet City at the time only aided in Tompkins' bad image.

Though the park saw plenty of conflicts throughout the past 150 years, the most recent took place in 1988. In an attempt to remove drug dealers and vagrants, police descended upon the park – however due to a mixture of bad communication and a ridiculous number of homeless people the entire situation devolved very quickly. 

The park as we know it today is, of course, a result of Robert Moses's grand scheme to redesign the entire metropolitan area. Featuring playgrounds, various game courts, plenty of open grass space and walkways all the way around the perimeter the park is very friendly to activities of all sorts.

It's a formidable feature of the neighborhood; one you'll find hard to avoid regardless of where in Alphabet City you find yourself walking around. Looking down from above, the park is literally in the center of everything – even lining up with the 14th Street loop up in Stuyvesant Town.

Perhaps the biggest issue troubling the park today is the sheer influx of people. No longer a (major) harbor for creeps and meth heads, gentrification has made it a family-friendly place where kids run and scream as fast and as loud as they can. In many ways, Tomkins Square Park is indiscernible from any other neighborhood park...it's safe, clean, and utterly plagued by sameness.

 

Madison Square Park

This week I decided to take advantage of Saturday's perfect weather and dedicate all the posts to a few choice Manhattan parks. Enjoy!

While stunning in its own right, it seems that Madison Square Park isn't so much defined by what's in it than by what's around it. Though certainly not as densely-packed with skyscrapers as the financial district or midtown, the number of iconic buildings which surround this humble 7-acre patch of grass is rather startling.

While the Flatiron building on the southwest corner may the best most famous amongst visitors, many locals more closely associate the park with the Met Life Tower & its massive (26.5 ft. in diameter) clock faces.  After being renovated in 1964, much of the original ornate renaissance-inspired detailing was removed or covered up by a new limestone facade. If you look at old photos of the tower you can see there seems to be a bit more going on than what we see today. In recent years it's been particularly well-known for being illuminated at night in a manner similar to the Empire State Building.

Also visible from the park are the New York Life Building – something that's hard to miss thanks to its gilded top – as well as the brand new One Madison Park, a sleek and slender condo development which rivals the Met Life Tower in height, but not elegance. Regardless what one may think of the new building, it undoubtedly continues the trend of bringing unique architecture to Madison Square.

The Park itself is usually rather serene with the exception of Shake Shack, which would have a line running down 23rd Street at 4 in the morning on a Tuesday in December if only it were open that late...or in the winter for that matter. However, the day I picked to visit also happened to be the Sikh Cultural Street Festival - so the park was overflowing with energy and colorful garments. Unfortunately for the hundreds (or thousands) who had gathered, the park had yet to open its large center lawn which forced everyone to the crowded pathways.

The park is well-known for hosting different art projects each year wich range from simple and sculptural to more conceptual; such as this year's Event Horizon installation. Event Horizon consists of 31 life-sized figures designed by Antony Gormley which sit around the neighborhood and on top of many buildings near the park. If you look closely you can see the figures staring down at you from above. It's like a big neighborhood-wide easter egg hunt.

While beautifully landscaped (originally by William Grant and Ignatz Pilat- who has ties to Olmstead who was responsible for Central Park), the park still feels rather bland in comparison to other green space around the city. Overall it simply feels flat and predictable. Whereas other parks – such as Carl Schurz Park, which I talked about yesterday – lend themselves to a sense of discovery and unrestrained nature, Madison Square Park feels like an afterthought with a few pathways brought in for good measure.

Carl Schurz Park

This week I decided to take advantage of Saturday's perfect weather and dedicate all the posts to a few choice Manhattan parks. Enjoy!

The Upper East Side, especially Yorkville, could by no means be called gritty or unsavory. The worst it could be called is homogeneous, bland or exclusive. This makes it all the more impressive that a humble 7-block park could have such positive effect on an already thriving neighborhood. Feeling like an 18th Century French Garden, the multi-leveled Carl Schurz Park hasn't always been so glamorous. After falling into disrepair in the 1970s, the Carl Schurz Park Association took it upon themselves to expand their scope to help pick up the aging park. Not living in New York (or even being alive) in the 1970's, I find it a bit surprising, especially since the park contains the home of the Mayor, Gracie Mansion (which, unsurprisingly isn't used by Bloomberg) that it would be anything less than a stellar example of landscaping.

To me, the 15-acre space feels like a condensed version of Central Park, featuring only the best elements of its bigger brother to the west. The incredible elevated promenade that overlooks the East River, Roosevelt Island and Queens, more than makes up for the lack of any water features within the park itself. A number of sunken plazas feature numerous statues, including one of Peter Pan near Gracie Mansion. Every step changes your perspective and presents new and unique views of your surroundings. A handful of playgrounds, basketball courts and even some small open fields allow for a myriad of activities.