Battery Park City

Introduction

Situated at the southwestern tip of Manhattan along the Hudson River, this 92-acre mixed-use community was built on landfill created from New York Harbor dredge and excavation materials from the World Trade Center site. Named after the adjacent Battery Park, the community houses numerous residential, commercial, and retail buildings and nearly 36 acres of carefully integrated parks and open space. A bid to redesign Robert F. Wagner, Jr., Park, located within Battery Park City, seeks to address resiliency issues in the wake of Hurricane Sandy and to "provide better opportunity for food and beverage." This could result in substantial changes to more than Wagner Park: it illustrates a shift in values and priorities for Battery Park City as a whole.

History

The idea for Battery Park City, today a 92-acre mixed-use community located on the southwestern tip of the borough of Manhattan in New York City, began in the 1960s as a reclamation project to replace dilapidated piers along the Hudson River with landfill. In 1968 the Battery Park City Authority (BPCA) was created by the New York State Legislature “for the purpose of financing, developing, constructing, maintaining, and operating a planned community development of the Battery Park City site as a mixed commercial and residential community.”

Battery Park City 1979 Master Plan, courtesy of OLIN

A master plan was approved in 1969, but there was little progress beyond the creation of landfill in the first decade, especially in the mid-1970s during New York City’s fiscal crisis. The genesis of the current Battery Park City began in 1979 with a new master plan by Stanton Eckstut and Alexander Cooper of Cooper Eckstut. The plan’s 26 parcels were designed independently by different developers, creating a diverse neighborhood fabric that emulated the city’s mixed character. In 1986, New York Times architecture critic Paul Goldberger praised the project as “far and away the finest urban grouping since Rockefeller Center, and one of the better pieces of urban design of modern times.”

Generous and thoughtfully articulated public spaces were part of the original plan and are integral to the neighborhood’s design and character. Highlights include Rector Park, designed by Innocenti and Webel in 1985; South Cove, a collaboration between artist Mary Miss, landscape architecture firm Child Associates, and Eckstut, opened in 1988; Nelson A. Rockefeller Park, by Carr, Lynch, Hack and Sandell with Oehme van Sweden as landscape architects; and the Esplanade, opened in stages by Hanna/Olin in the 1980s and 1990s. Teardrop Park, designed by Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, debuted in 2004. In 1998 architect Cesar Pelli’s World Financial Center was completed, with a Winter Garden by M. Paul Friedberg + Partners. It was restored in 2002 by Balmori Associates. The neighborhood also encompasses significant public art and cultural landmarks, such as the Irish Hunger Memorial. Since 1988, the BPCA has managed and operated these parks and public spaces.

South Cove, Battery Park City, New York, NY, photo by Charles A. Birnbaum, 2010

Robert F. Wagner, Jr., Park, named for a prominent New York public figure, opened in 1996. It was a collaboration of project lead Laurie Olin with Hanna/Olin, Lynden Miller who designed two gardens based on "hot" and "cool" plant colors, and Machado and Silvetti Associates who performed architectural services. The result was a significant work of Postmodern design. This park is simultaneously a gateway to Battery Park City and an exclamation point at its end. The park also includes sculpture by Louise Bourgeois, Tony Cragg, and Jim Dine.

When it opened in 1996, Paul Goldberger wrote in the New York Times that the park is “one of the finest public spaces New York has seen in at least a generation.” He characterized it as a “lush void” and noted: “The heart of this 3.5-acre public park is a great rectangle of lawn, utterly empty, absolutely flat and tightly enclosed … Somehow it manages to feel as rich and as sensual -- and as tranquil -- as a thousand acres in the country, and it is a minor miracle.”

The park is worthy of an assessment as an historic resource for potential listing on the National Register of Historic Places. Indeed, the larger Battery Park City ensemble – which Paul Goldberger touted in the New York Times as “a national model of civilized urban planning” – should be considered for listing in the National Register. Even though it is less than 50 years old, the usual cut-off point for consideration for listing, exceptions are made, and the ensemble already meets various criteria. Several of the practitioners who worked on parks there, including James van Sweden, Wolfgang Oehme, Diana Balmori, and Richard Webel, are no longer living. The firm Hanna/Olin no longer exists, and various other professionals are no longer practicing.