Justice Sotomayor Houses Playground

JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR HOUSES PLAYGROUND

What was here before?

William Watson (1812-1877) owned a substantial amount of land in the Bronx, including this site. His estate, known as "Wilmount," extended from the Bronx River at West Farms Square, across Westchester Avenue to Bruckner Boulevard. After Watson's death, his estate was divided into lots and streets. Manor Avenue was named for his house, and Watson Avenue, north of the park, was named for the owner.

How did this site become a park?

The Bronxdale Houses were built in conjunction with Public School 138 with a playground for over 1,000 families beginning in 1951. The Houses and playground were renamed Justice Sonia Sotomayor Houses and Community Center in 2010.

An interagency initiative was announced in 2022 to build new open spaces and playgrounds at six New York City Housing Authority developments. As part of the partnership, NYC Parks maintains and operates the renovated open spaces. This site was reconstructed under this joint initiative in 2024 with new play equipment, water features, game tables, benches, landscaping, and more.

Who is this park named for?

Sonia Sotomayor (B.1954) is a former resident of the Bronxdale Houses and an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.

Sotomayor was born and raised in the Bronx and attended nearby Blessed Sacrament School and Cardinal Spellman High School, where she graduated as valedictorian from both institutions. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in 1976 from Princeton University, graduating summa cum laude and a member of Phi Beta Kappa and receiving the Pyne Prize, the highest academic honor Princeton awards to an undergraduate. In 1979, she earned a J.D. from Yale Law School where she served as an editor of the Yale Law Journal.

She served as Assistant District Attorney in the New York County District Attorney’s Office from 1979–1984 and then as an associate and then partner at Pavia & Harcourt from 1984-1992.

From 1992-1998 she served in the Southern District of New York before ascending to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit from 1998-2009. President Barack Obama nominated her as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court on May 26, 2009, and she assumed this role August 8, 2009.

Sotomayor has honorary law degrees from several prestigious institutions including Northeastern University and Howard University. She received the Katherine Hepburn medal from Bryn Mawr College and was inducted in the National Women’s Hall of Fame. A painting of her, along with the other women of the Supreme Court, is in the collection of the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C.