Highbridge Park and Water Tower

Washington Heights

Manhattan

There are enough bike paths in NYC that it is almost possible to ride around the entire perimeter of Manhattan Island. And, if proposed bike paths get completed, aforementioned feat should soon be accomplishable. Don’t get too excited, though, as several projects that were slated to be completed Spring 2012 are still behind locked fences.

Thanks to incomplete bike routes, Highbridge Park isn’t as easy to get to as it could be, but once you get there you will find one of the three mountain bike paths in NYC, and the only one located in Manhattan (the other two are in Queens and Staten Island). Be forewarned, though, as this path far enough off the beaten that you will encounter at least one or two makeshift shanty homes. Think of it as local color.

Highbridge Park is named after High Bridge, the oldest standing bridge in NYC, and one of the city’s few pedestrian-only bridges. High Bridge opened in 1848 as part of the Croton Aqueduct.  The aqueduct was developed to bring fresh water to the rapidly growing city and prevent future cholera epidemics like the city had seen through much of the 1820s and 30s. Highbridge Park developed piecemeal between 1867 and 1960, with majority of it acquired between 1895 and 1901. The park lies in several chunks on both the Manhattan and the Bronx sides of the bridge.

Cars were never allowed on High Bridge, only pedestrian and bike traffic. When the construction of major expressways caused the popularity of the waterfront to fade, in 1923 the city proposed demolishing High Bridge, something which was vehemently opposed by the public. Repairs and alterations were later made on the bridge to make it possible for large ships to pass under it, but the Croton Aqueduct was removed from service in 1958 and not long after the bridge was closed to traffic of any kind. The story is the bridge was closed due to hooligans throwing things off it onto passing Circle Line boats in the Harlem River.

One of the stunning architectural features of Highbridge Park—aside from the bridge itself, which was originally made of fifteen imposing Roman stone arches—is the High Bridge Water Tower. The tower was designed by famed engineer John Jervis in 1872 and keeps with the Romanesque Revival architectural theme of the bridge. The tower was damaged in an arson fire in 1984 but was later repaired in 1990. Visitors used to be able to go up the winding interior staircase on ranger led tours to see magnificent views of the surrounding city, and the tower was a popular destination during Open House New York. Unfortunately, tours were halted in 2010 due to concerns over the stability of the tower’s windows which have suffered considerable water damage over time.

There is good news for both the bridge and the tower, however, as both are slated for restoration. The bridge was supposed to reopen this summer, but now the proposed reopening date is summer of 2014. Restoration of the tower is a bit iffier—currently funds are being raised by the High Bridge Coalition, an organization that was founded in 2001 with the goal of restoring the bridge and its surrounding area. Even Bette Midler, who chairs the New York Restoration Project, has been working to restore the park.

For the meantime, bikers and visitors will have to be contented with exterior views of the tower and terrestrial views of the bridge. They do make a nice biking destination for those who are up for the journey. 

http://www.nycgovparks.org/park-features/highbridge-park/planyc

Hall of Fame for Great Americans

Bronx Community College

University Heights, the Bronx

When asked to name a prominent university in New York City, most individuals would likely identify New York University or Columbia. Both NYU and Columbia are prestigious institutions with dreadfully long, esteemed histories. Their campuses are resplendent with the sort of Neoclassical architecture that assures parents paying their child’s hefty tuition that their progeny are attending houses of true learning. Their private art collections are a name-dropper’s wet dream and (in the case of Columbia) the lawn is perfectly manicured.

I doubt anyone would ever list Bronx Community College as one of NYC’s elite institutions of higher learning, yet it possesses a surprisingly large number of beaux-arts edifices that were designed by the celebrated 19^th-century architect Stanford White. The architecture firm of McKim, Mead, & White was responsible for such gems as NYC’s original (and tragically demolished) Penn Station, the Washington Square Park Arch, and Tiffany and Company. Equally surprising is that one of the structures constructed by White at BCC is a 630-foot open-air colonnade filled with almost 100 bronze portrait busts, some of which were made by the same artists who made sculptures for the Lincoln Memorial, the U.S. Supreme Court, and the White-designed Washington Square Park Arch.

The mystery is cleared up when one learns that the campus that is now owned by BCC originally housed NYU’s undergraduate college and now-defunct engineering school. The University Heights campus was founded in 1894 as a way to alleviate overcrowding from its Washington Heights campus. But when NYC’s financial crisis of the 1960s and 1970s threatened to bankrupt the school, New York University sold the campus to the City University of New York in 1973.

So, it was NYU’s striving for greatness that led to a small community college branch of CUNY to be in possession of four buildings designed by White and become the first community college in the country to be designated a National Historic Landmark. The campus isn’t all arches, domes, and columns though. NYU also commissioned Marcel Breuer (the Bauhaus architect of Whitney Museum and Wassily Chair fame) to create four brutalist concrete buildings, which are some of the most depressing residence and lecture halls ever to grace a college campus. Sometimes there are prices to pay for always hiring the latest trendsetter; not all styles age well.

For those of you who think the Hall of Fame for Great Americans sounds like just about the most boring thing ever, let me assure you that it is surprisingly captivating. I, too, had my doubts. I thought I’d be in and out in a few minutes but ended up staying almost an hour, and then continued the wandering throughout the rest of the campus. There’s an element of pure high school history class geek enjoyment in seeing which Great Americans NYU chose to induct into the Hall of Fame. They’re even divided into categories to help you figure out who they are (inventors, statesmen, soldiers, academics, writers), and each bust is accompanied by a personal quote meant to epitomize their place in history. There are spaces for 102 busts, but four of the slots remain open as no Americans have been inducted since the property switched hands in 1973. If BCC ever decided to fill the remaining spaces, I’d be very curious who’d they elect.

I’m not going to lie to you: unless you live in along the western part of the Bronx or Upper Manhattan, getting to BCC is a pain in the ass. And we all know the Bronx isn’t what it used to be (Thank you very much, Robert Moses.). You can get the 4-train to Burnside in the Bronx, the Bx12 bus from Upper Manhattan, or even the Metro-North to University Heights. If you decide to make a trip that combines touring BCC along with a visit to the University Woods park next door to the campus, you know you’re going to spend the entire time in the park stumbling upon the make-shift abodes of homeless persons and trying to avoid the ever-present aroma of urine. Hardly a relaxing stroll through the woods. Instead, you may want to combine it with a trip to the nearby Edgar Allen Poe Cottage or the not-as-far-as-you-think Arthur Avenue, home of Bronx’s Little Italy, which has survived much better than the one downtown thanks to the lack of an ever-encroaching Chinatown.

The best time to make a journey to BCC to explore its surprising architecture and monuments (including several rusty Revolutionary War canons) is a weekend or anytime when classes are not in session. Just make sure the campus is open; you’d hate to be turned away at the gate after going to so much trouble to get there. I imagine it would be much harder to leisurely stroll the grounds and admire the bronzed Americans surrounded by its very rowdy student body. I teach at BMCC, one of BCC’s sister community colleges, and there are few places to find respite on, say, a Tuesday afternoon in the middle of the semester. Although, if you go when school is in session, you might be able to peak inside the fabulous domed library.

http://www.bcc.cuny.edu/halloffame/ 

http://www.bcc.cuny.edu/About-BCC/?p=College-History