Waterfront: A Walk Around Manhattan by Phillip Lopate Read Free Book Online Page A

Mayan-pyramid-like stepped roof by Kevin Roche. (An outscaled new wing is presently under construction.) I was initially dubious about the necessity for this Museum of Jewish Heritage, given that the city already has a Jewish Museum uptown; but I found the exhibits informative and moving. The large, bare, upper loft space with its myriad river-view windows is the place to be on a sunny day.
    * Though it is not exactly a park, I would also like to mention the miraculously strange Irish Hunger Memorial: a replica of a bleak Hibernian hut and hill, perfect for seeing on a drizzly day, located in Battery Park City's Vesey Street and North End Avenue.
    The next park moving north, South Cove, is to me the jewel of the complex. There is something mysterious and, above all, intimate about South Cove, with its haunting blue-glassed lanterns and wooden bridges that creak underfoot. Leaning over the wooden bridge, with waves slapping against the algae-covered pilings, you have the sense of being much closer to the water than at the nearby Esplanade. Alongside the bridge, the arrangement of rocks suggests a Japanese rock garden, while the wild rushes and other plantings present a rugged scene that might have been glimpsed by the first Dutch settlers. Incredibly, this serene retreat is but a half-mile from Wall Street, which can be glimpsed like a dream backdrop if you turn your head eastward.
    All coves have something special about them: the world changes within their arms, becomes softer, more tidal. This insight seems to have guided the South Cove's designers: sculptor Mary Miss, landscape artist Susan Childs, and architect Eckstut. The result is a rare meeting of the natural and the constructed: curved metal bridges nicely complicate the choices for wandering, while a spiraling, tilted observation tower, whose oval top wittily quotes the Statue of Liberty's crown, offers a romantic outpost for lovers.
    Just north of South Cove is the aforementioned Esplanade, a straight concourse edging the residential sector, and a perfect place to stroll, bicycle, jog, or meditate on the passage of the river. Tastefully done, its innovation, if you will, was to eschew novelty, and borrow a vocabulary of materials already familiar to New Yorkers from Central Park and Carl Schurz Park: the gray hexagonal flagstones, the curved iron railings, the comfortable benches that are replicas of those at the 1939 World's Fair, andthe old-fashioned gaslight stanchions. Stan Eckstut, who designed the Esplanade, now says, “In hindsight, my biggest mistake was using those old-fashioned lampposts.” He agrees with criticism that the Esplanade's New York's Greatest Hits design wasted an opportunity to evolve new prototypes for light stanchions and park furniture. But at the time, Battery Park City was an iffy proposition, and it was necessary to reassure investors with familiar visual touches. In any case, the Esplanade works beautifully as a public space. Let's leave it at that.
    Farther north along the river's edge, you come into the spacious North Cove, with its marina and plaza, in front of the World Financial Center. The plaza is very large, and opens onto the river in a dramatic fashion that suggests, at sunset, the landing pier before Piazza San Marco in Venice. It could accommodate a huge crowd in a festival, and provide the sense of a ceremonial entrance to the city. Unfortunately, since it opened, the marina has essentially been a parking lot for luxury yachts going nowhere; post-9–11, the crossings of water taxis at least bring some maritime activity to the cove.
    What makes the plaza itself special is the tremendously expansive openness of the vista. The multiple levels invite walking around. There is also a wonderful literary homage in the form of an iron fence: you walk along it reading, letter by letter, lines from Walt Whitman and Frank O'Hara. “…City of the sea! City of wharves and stores—city of tall façades of marble and iron! Proud and