Staten Island Greenbelt
Staten Island Greenbelt | |
---|---|
Type | Urban park |
Location | Staten Island, New York City, United States |
Coordinates | 40°35′18″N 74°08′21″W / 40.58846°N 74.139073°W |
Area | 2,800 acres (11 km2) |
Created | 1984 |
Owned by | NYC Parks |
Operated by | Greenbelt Conservancy |
Status | Open all year |
Website | www |
The Staten Island Greenbelt is a system of contiguous public parkland and natural areas in the central hills of the New York City borough of Staten Island. It is the second largest component of the parks owned by the government of New York City and is maintained by the city's Department of Parks and Recreation and the Greenbelt Conservancy, a not-for-profit organization that works in partnership with NYC Parks to care for the Greenbelt and raise funds for its maintenance and programs. The Greenbelt includes High Rock Park, LaTourette Park, William T. Davis Wildlife Refuge, and Willowbrook Park among others.[1]
Description
The administrative headquarters of the Greenbelt and Greenbelt Conservancy are located at the entrance to High Rock Park (one of the many parks within the system) with a street address of 200 Nevada Avenue in the Egbertville neighborhood; in June 2004 a second facility, known as the Greenbelt Nature Center, was opened approximately 0.75 miles (1.21 km) away, at 700 Rockland Avenue. The Greenbelt Conservancy, which works in partnership with the NYC Parks Department, is a membership organization offering year-round nature-themed events for people of all ages.
The Protectors of Pine Oak Woods, a citizen organization committed to the conservation and preservation of remaining natural area on Staten Island has, since the early 1970s, carried on the mission of its predecessor, SIGNAL. Today the "Protectors" continue the tradition of organizing people concerned about the island's fragile and threatened wilderness via lobbying and naturalist led hikes.
A researchable archive of planning, legal, public relations, and other documents related to the Staten Island Greenbelt, its ecology and history, is housed at the library of the College of Staten Island, a campus of the City University of New York.[2]
Geology
Containing an extensive system of connected trails and covering 2,800 acres (1,100 ha), its forested hills run the length of Staten Island's midsection while wetlands and kettle ponds fill much of the low-lying areas. Four hundred and ten feet above sea level,
Wildlife
The Greenbelt is one of the most biologically diverse places in New York City. It is home to several species of amphibians; such as the eastern redback salamander, the green frog, the
Early settlement
The native Lenni-Lenape, who inhabited the island centuries before the arrival of the Dutch, reportedly dubbed Staten Island Aquehonga Monocknong or "the place of bad woods" perhaps because of the spirits they believed dwelled there. Then, as today, the boulder-littered moraines were covered with many species of trees: oak, hickory, maple, beech, as well as lesser quantities of birch, sweet gum, ash, black walnut, wild cherry, and tulip. Below the canopy of this sub-climax forest grew dogwood, ironwood, spicebush, blackberry, wild grape, Virginia creeper, and sassafras, along with royal and cinnamon ferns, skunk cabbage, lady slipper, and trout lilies in the wetter areas.
Within the oak-mulch enriched soil that has been laid down over millennia, arrowheads have been found. These finds attest to both the Leni-Lenape's subsistence on and unsuccessful defense of their home, which contained the natural resources that made it so attractive to first Dutch and then British colonizers in the 17th and 18th centuries. Its forested hills, strategically located between and above the Raritan Bay and the New York Harbor, offered timber for ship building, iron ore for the production of cannonballs, and a staging ground for British troops during the War for Independence.
In the 1800s, several centuries after European settlers had come to, named, deforested, and farmed large portions of Staten Island, travelers of a different sort arrived.
Proposal for a park
In 1871, in his capacity as consultant to the Staten Island Improvement Commission, Olmsted made the following proposal for Staten Island:
...it would be a simple plan to form a park … four miles in length … It would occupy a moderately central position and turn to good use a large extent of land … This ridge extends from the
Richmondtown to Stapleton. But while its altitude is melted away in gentle slopes to the northward…permitting it that quarter the greatest freedom in the location of roads, it descends toward the sea on the south in steep and broken declivities, totally unsuited, not to say impracticable, for roads for rapid travel.
Other proposals on behalf of preserving wilderness on Staten Island were put forward in subsequent years. William T. Davis, a naturalist born on the island, believed:
The best park is certainly a piece of woodland left as Nature arranged it, with a few path cut through it.
When Davis, along with local historian Charles Leng, coauthored a history of Staten Island in 1896, they wrote:
The crowning glory of Staten Island’s topography and scenery is the forest that springs from its rich, well-watered soil … Irregularity of contour and excessive wetness have saved such places from village development; and there is hope that some at least may ultimately become parklands, for which purpose they are eminently suited.
Just one year later, at an 1897 public hearing on the topic of land preservation in Albany, the state's capital, Staten Island resident Erastus Wiman stated:
[The land is] a wilderness of such beauty pervaded this region that no expenditure could improve upon.
Parkway plan
Original plan
During the first half of the 20th century, several proposals for Staten Island parks and parkways were drafted first by the Borough of Staten Island and then by the City of New York. During the early 1960s, though then-
The 4.8-mile (7.7 km) parkway route going through the area has been de-mapped despite occasional proposals for its revival due to steadily increasing highway congestion on Staten Island. None of these proposals, however, have received any significant support from either the island's elected officials or residents. The parkway ends at the Greenbelt's southwestern edge, at
Opposition
Conservation activists, given immediacy by the Federal Highway Act and hope in the person of President John F. Kennedy's Secretary of the Interior, Stewart Udall, mobilized in opposition to these plans. They first saved High Rock Girl Scout Camp, the acreage of which had originally been a part of Pouch Boy Scout Camp, including Orbach Lake, to the north. With a $35,000 grant from the State of New York it was bought from the Boy Scouts and established as Camp High Rock for Girls. For thirteen years, the camp served girl scouts from throughout the five boroughs of New York City. However, in 1964, the Girl scout Council of Greater New York secretly decided to sell the camp to a developer for $1 million. Upon learning about this sale, the New York City Parks Department and the State of New York, with the help of the Open Lands Foundation, raised over $1.3 million to buy back the land from the developer, thus creating High Rock Park.[3]
Then, on November 22, 1965, the Staten Island Citizens Planning Committee (SICPC), which had begun in 1954 as an ad hoc committee of the
One year into the SICPC's legal fight against the original route of the Richmond Parkway, the Staten Island Greenbelt Natural Areas League (SIGNAL), spearheaded by another resident-journalist,
Work continues
In spite of opposition, road work began in 1965 on what became known as "Section 1". In 1966 Volmer Associates were hired by the city of New York to describe alternate routes to Section 1. They were proposed, studied, and debated by New York state and city officials, creating contention and divisions even within these governmental units. While travel distance between the island's bridges was on paramount concern to the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority, the City Park Department, led by August Hecksher, commissioned the planning firm Wallace, McHarg, Roberts and Todd. Ian McHarg, a Glasgow born landscape architect, who had stated in his much studied book Design with Nature that engineer road builders were "gouging and scarring the landscape without remorse," headed up the landmark study.[3]
Having pointed out that a method for displaying and factoring social values into highway design and planning had not been developed, McHarg set about creating just that. Long before GIS technology was available, McHarg used data rich maps and overlays which allowed planners to visually understand how social values – historic, residential, economic, recreational, scenic, ecological factors – synergistically interacted with and potentially impacted upon human activity, including road building. Using map transparencies he and his colleagues produced the commissioned report with a recommendation stating that the route to the west of what is today the Greenbelt, was the "least social cost corridor."[3]
Under duress from developers who were eager to begin building homes adjacent to the roadway, the Greenbelt's erstwhile supporters, Mayor John Lindsay and Governor
Remaining parts
When the work was halted by the city, excavations were used to construct what was known as "Moses Mountain" and now "Paulo's Peak,"
1980s expansion
In 1982, 25 acres (10 ha) of city-owned land, which heretofore had belonged to the New York City Farm Colony, were added to the Greenbelt; this tract is located on the north side of Rockland Avenue, from Brielle Avenue almost to Forest Hill Road. In 1984, the Staten Island Greenbelt was officially recognized by the city,[8] becoming one of the largest natural areas within the five boroughs of New York City and the second largest park in the city, behind Pelham Bay Park.
See also
References
Explanatory notes
- U.S. Capitol, Washington, D.C.; the Boston Emerald Necklace park system; Stanford University, Palo Alto, California; Lake Park, Milwaukee; and Jackson Park, Chicago; Olmsted's most important late work was the design for the World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago (1890-1893).
Citations
- ^ "The Greenbelt". nycgovparks. Retrieved 28 May 2020.
- ^ "Collection: SIM-17: Robert Hagenhofer Collection | College of Staten Island ArchivesSpace". archivesspace.library.csi.cuny.edu. Retrieved 2023-03-03.
- ^ a b c d e f Caro, Robert A. (1974) The Power Broker. New York: Vintage.
- ^ Mitchell, John (1976) High Rock: A Natural and Unnatural History. Friends of High Rock.
- ^ City of New York, Special Natural Features District 1985.
- ^ "Paulo's Peak: The Greenbelt Virtual Tour". NYC Parks.
- ^ Yates, Maura (February 7, 2010) "Major surgery planned for Staten Island Expressway" Staten Island Advance
- ISBN 978-1-476-74124-6.
This article needs additional citations for verification. (January 2015) |
Bibliography
- Corbett, John. Ian McHarg: Overlap maps and the evaluation of social and environmental costs of land use change. Retrieved June 6, 2007, from CSISS Classics Web Site.
- Greene, Bradford (2006). Personal interviews with author
- Hagenhofer, Robert. (2007). Personal interviews with author.
- Staten Island Greenbelt Documentary produced by The City Concealed
External links
- "The Greenbelt (virtual tour)". New York City Department of Parks and Recreation. Retrieved 2009-07-17.
- "Welcome to the Greenbelt, Forest lands, hiking trails and traditional parks in the heart of Staten Island, New York". Greenbelt Conservancy Inc. Retrieved 2009-07-18.
- "Fresh Kills - Department of City Planning". Retrieved 2009-07-17.
- "S.I. Greenbelt". New York City Department of Parks and Recreation. Retrieved 2009-07-17.
- NY-NJTC: Staten Island Greenbelt Trail Details and Info
- The Robert Hagenhofer Collection at the College of Staten Island's Archives and Special Collections