| City Hall Park | |
|---|---|
 The park in 2007 | |
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| Type | Public park |
| Nearest city | New York City, New York, United States |
| Coordinates | 40°42′44″N74°00′26″W / 40.71222°N 74.00722°W |
City Hall Park is a public park surrounding New York City Hall in the Civic Center of Manhattan. It was the town commons of the nascent city of New York. [1]
David Provoost was an officer in the Dutch West India Company. [2] His name was on an 1652 list of nine men who governed New Amsterdam. He owned 35 acres (14 ha) around where City Hall Park is now situated. [3]
During the pre-Revolutionary era City Hall Park was the site of many rallies and movements. For instance, in 1765, New Yorkers protested the Stamp Act of 1765 at the site. On March 18, 1766, New Yorkers rejoiced when the Stamp Act was repealed.
In 1766, the Sons of Liberty erected the first “Liberty pole", a commemorative mast topped by a vane featuring the word “liberty", outside the Soldiers’ Barracks. British soldiers chopped it down, and it was replaced five times. A replica dating to 1921 now stands near its original location between City Hall and Broadway.
In 1766, St. Paul's Chapel was completed as a chapel of Lower Manhattan's Trinity Church. It stood in a field some distance from the growing port city to the south and was built as a "chapel-of-ease" for parishioners who did not live near the Mother Church. Two years later, construction began on the new Bridewell, a jail. American Prisoners of War would be held in the Bridewell during the British occupation of New York in the American Revolutionary War.
On July 9, 1776, units of the Continental Army and citizens gathered in the commons to hear the Declaration of Independence read by George Washington, while over 150 British ships and tens of thousands of troops were in the harbor. The Sons of Liberty led a crowd from there down Broadway to Bowling Green and tore down the gilt lead statue of George III of Great Britain there. On November 9, 1783, the American forces recaptured the Civic Center, and George Washington raised the flag in the park. Six years later, General Washington was named the president of the United States of America, and immediately after his inauguration, President Washington went to the renowned St. Paul's Chapel, the oldest surviving church in Manhattan.
In 1802, since the original City Hall of New York City was aging and could not accommodate the growing municipal government, New York City's administration decided to hold a competition for the best new City Hall design. Aaron Burr promised Philadelphia's Benjamin Henry Latrobe that he would win. When he lost, Latrobe bitterly denounced the winners, “bricklayer” John McComb Jr. and French exile Joseph-François Mangin, and their “vile invention". In fact, McComb and Mangin were each accomplished architects, and their design was superior to Latrobe's, but City Hall was their only collaboration, and it was brief. McComb alone oversaw construction and subsequent changes to the design, and Mangin's career seems to have faltered. Decades later, a McComb descendant erased Mangin's name from the original drawings, but Mangin's name was added to the cornerstone of City Hall in 2003. The building was completed in 1812; it was designed in a Federal style with French influence. It was sited to be north of the heart of the city at the time.
By the late 1810s, New York's cultural identity was growing, and in 1818, The Rotunda was built as New York City's first art museum. [4]
Slavery was abolished in New York on July 4, 1827, Emancipation Day, prompting a two-day celebration in the park and a parade.
In 1830, the old debtor prison, New Gaol, was transformed into the city's hall of records. When the building was torn down in 1903, it was New York's oldest municipal building.
New York City's lavish architecture and growing economy attracted tourists, and in 1836, the first New York City luxury hotel was built. Isaiah Rogers, with a reputation for building America's first luxury hotel, designed the six-story Park Hotel, which was commonly known as the Astor House.
In 1842, the Croton Fountain was placed in the center of City Hall Park to celebrate the Croton Aqueduct, New York City's first dependable supply of pure water. The aqueduct drew water from the Croton Dam more than 40 miles (64 km) north of the city and was considered one of the great engineering feats of the 19th century.
Starting in 1861, the Tweed Courthouse was built in the northern portion of the park. The courthouse was widely seen as a symbol of corruption because it was built using funds provided by the corrupt William M. "Boss" Tweed, whose Tammany Hall political machine controlled the city and state governments at the time. It was completed in 1881, twenty years after construction started. [5]
New York City Hall is the seat of New York City government, located at the center of City Hall Park in the Civic Center area of Lower Manhattan, between Broadway, Park Row, and Chambers Street. Constructed from 1803 to 1812, the building is the oldest city hall in the United States that still houses its original governmental functions. The building houses the office of the Mayor of New York City and the chambers of the New York City Council. While the Mayor's Office is in the building, the staff of thirteen municipal agencies under mayoral control are located in the nearby Manhattan Municipal Building, one of the largest government buildings in the world, with many others housed in various buildings in the immediate vicinity.
Collect Pond, or Fresh Water Pond, was a body of fresh water in what is now Chinatown in Lower Manhattan, New York City. For the first two centuries of European settlement in Manhattan, it was the main New York City water supply system for the growing city. The location of the former pond later became the site of a jail, and is now memorialized by Collect Pond Park, which includes a reflecting pool to acknowledge the historic importance of this body of water.
James Renwick Jr. was an American architect in the 19th century, noted especially for designing churches and museums. The Encyclopedia of American Architecture calls him "one of the most successful American architects of his time".
The High Bridge is the oldest bridge in New York City, having originally opened as part of the Croton Aqueduct in 1848 and reopened as a pedestrian walkway in 2015 after being closed for over 45 years. A steel arch bridge with a height of 140 ft (43 m) over the Harlem River, it connects the New York City boroughs of the Bronx and Manhattan. The eastern end is located in the Highbridge section of the Bronx near the western end of West 170th Street, and the western end is located in Highbridge Park in Manhattan, roughly parallel to the end of West 174th Street.
Belvedere Castle is a folly in Central Park in Manhattan, New York City. It contains exhibit rooms, an observation deck, and since 1919 has housed Central Park’s official weather station.
The Croton Aqueduct or Old Croton Aqueduct was a large and complex water distribution system constructed for New York City between 1837 and 1842. The great aqueducts, which were among the first in the United States, carried water by gravity 41 miles (66 km) from the Croton River in Westchester County to reservoirs in Manhattan. It was built because local water resources had become polluted and inadequate for the growing population of the city. Although the aqueduct was largely superseded by the New Croton Aqueduct, which was built in 1890, the Old Croton Aqueduct remained in service until 1955.
St. Paul's Chapel is a chapel building of Trinity Church, an episcopal parish, located at 209 Broadway, between Fulton Street and Vesey Street, in Lower Manhattan, New York City. Built in 1766, it is the oldest surviving church building in Manhattan, and one of the nation's finest examples of Late Georgian church architecture.
The New Croton Reservoir is a reservoir in Westchester County, New York, part of the New York City water supply system lying approximately 22 miles (35 km) north of New York City. It is the collecting point for water from all reservoirs in the Croton Watershed.
The Tweed Courthouse is a historic courthouse building at 52 Chambers Street in the Civic Center of Manhattan in New York City. It was built in the Italianate style with Romanesque Revival interiors. William M. "Boss" Tweed – the corrupt leader of Tammany Hall, a political machine that controlled the New York state and city governments when the courthouse was built – oversaw the building's erection. The Tweed Courthouse served as a judicial building for New York County, a county of New York state coextensive with the New York City borough of Manhattan. It is the second-oldest city government building in the borough, after City Hall.
St. Nicholas Park is a public park in Manhattan, New York City, between the neighborhoods of Harlem, Hamilton Heights and Manhattanville. The nearly 23-acre (93,000 m2) park is contained by 141st Street to the north, 128th Street to the south, St. Nicholas Terrace to the west, and St. Nicholas Avenue to the east.
The Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir, also known as Central Park Reservoir, is a decommissioned reservoir in Central Park in the borough of Manhattan, New York City, stretching from 86th to 96th Streets. It covers 106 acres (43 ha) and holds over 1 billion US gal (3.8 million m3) of water.
The Croton Aqueduct Gate House is located in Manhattanville, Manhattan, New York City, New York. The building was built in 1884 and was added to the National Register of Historic Places on September 22, 1983. After being decommissioned in 1984, the below-grade valve chambers were filled and the building sat empty for nearly two decades. Between 2004 and 2006, architects oversaw an adaptive reuse project converting the gate house into theater space for Harlem Stage/Aaron Davis Hall.
Joseph-François Mangin was born on June 10, 1758, in Dompaire, in the Vosges region of France. He was a French-American architect who is noted for designing New York City Hall and St. Patrick's Old Cathedral in New York City.
The first decorative fountain in the United States was dedicated in Philadelphia in 1809. Early American fountains were used to distribute clean drinking water, had little ornamentation, and copied European styles.
McKenna Square is a 0.24-acre public green space in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Upper Manhattan in New York City. The park is located in a median of West 165th Street, between Audubon and Amsterdam Avenues. The triangular site was created in 1917 in conjunction of the widening of West 165th Street and was transferred to Parks in 1937.
The Rotunda was a building that stood in City Hall Park in Lower Manhattan, New York City, from 1818 to 1870.
The Croton Water Filtration Plant, is a drinking water treatment facility in New York City which began operation in 2015. The plant construction cost was over $3 billion, The facility was built 160 feet (49 m) under Van Cortlandt Park's Mosholu Golf Course in the Bronx.
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See also: Manhattan Community Board 1 | |||||||
