Poe Park

The Daily Plant : Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Greener Pastures: Celebrating 125 Years Of Bronx Parks

Ben Cohen/New York City Parks Photo Archive

NYC Parks is proud to present Greener Pastures: Celebrating 125 Years of Bronx Parks, on view through November 16, 2013 at the Poe Park Visitor Center. The exhibition includes 30 vintage and contemporary photographs from the New York City Parks Photo Archive, as well as vintage postcards highlighting the long and diverse history of the Bronx Parks system and its rich and varied features and programming. The exhibition is curated by Parks’ Director of Art & Antiquities, Jonathan Kuhn.

Greener Pastures celebrates the foresight of park planners, the insights of generations of designers, and above all, the exuberance of park users who have given the borough’s parks a unique and vibrant identity.

The Bronx Parks system is both a success story and a work in progress. In 1881 reformer John Mullaly formed the New York Park Association, the City’s first open space advocacy group, which successfully influenced the State to establish six major parks and three parkways, acquired by the City in 1888. To this day, the Bronx has the highest ratio of municipal parkland to total acreage of the five boroughs, representing more than 25%.

Some of the photographic selections in the exhibit include: a survey team at Echo Park (now Julius Richman), an aerial view of Orchard Beach (the “Bronx Riviera”), the borough’s earliest playground and the City’s first modern year-round recreation center (both at St. Mary’s Park), community gardens, natural areas, a performance by Machito and his Latin band on Hispanic Day at Yankee Stadium, and even a community dance in the 1960s at Poe Park, the host park for this exhibition.

Opened in 2012, the Poe Park Visitor Center is one of the most recent additions in the 125-year history of the borough’s parks. The center hosts public programs supportive of Parks’ mission, with particular emphasis on the arts, including artist workshops, readings, film screenings, temporary exhibits, lectures and community planning. The Poe Park Visitor Center is located at 2640 Grand Concourse in the Bronx. It is open Tuesday through Saturday from 8:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m., and admission is free.