Recreational Area

David (Happy Trails) Lutz, Executive Director of the Neighborhood Open Space Coalition.

Two Brooklyn greenstreets have just been adopted. On Monday, October 15 and Wednesday, October 17 Parks celebrated the planting of the borough’s 340^th and 341^st greenstreets with two ribbon cutting ceremonies.

A 1,590-square foot property at Woodhull Street and Hamilton Place in Redhook, Brooklyn has become a native plant garden. Jessie (Heckle) Snyder designed the site to evoke the natural history of the neighborhood. Growing there are hardy urban species, and also species, like blueberries, that are native to New York’s forests and shorelines. The new greenstreet is a companion to another one, just a block away, as well as to the local community gardens and greenway. The Columbia Waterfront Community Gardeners became one of the latest in a growing number of community organizations that have taken responsibility for the daily maintenance of greenstreet sites, work that is supplemented by Parks’ Greenstreets teams.

At Grace Court and Hicks Streets in Brooklyn, a 535-square foot traffic triangle was greened with plants that will draw birds and butterflies as well as people and their pets. Visitors will notice pink roses, purple buds, evergreen shrubs, bee balm, and echinacea, too. A cobblestone path through the center of the site evokes old New York, and a view of the Manhattan skyline is a powerful reminder of New York today. $10,000 funded the reconstruction, celebrated Wednesday. The Grace Court Community Group suggested the planting of a greenstreet on this site and have agreed to care for it as it grows. The greenstreet is the capstone of their neighborhood revitalization efforts; first they spruced up the sidewalks, now they beautify the intersections.

Commissioner Henry J. (StarQuest) Stern; Julius (Mirror) Spiegel, Brooklyn Borough Commissioner; Nancy (Liberty) Barthold, Brooklyn Chief of Operations; Bram (Dogwood) Gunther, Deputy Director of Central Forestry spoke at both events. David (Happy Trails) Lutz, Executive Director of the Neighborhood Open Space Coalition and a member of the Columbia Waterfront Community Gardeners spoke on Monday, and Fred Halla, Editor of the Brooklyn Record and a neighborhood resident spoke at the ribbon cutting on Wednesday.

(Thursday, October 20, 1988)

Riverside Drive, a quiet parkside retreat for New York City residents since the beginning of the 20^th century, has remained virtually untouched by development in the last 40 years. Now workers are constructing the first new building on the green drive in more than three decades. But the developers are bringing back something old with the new—by helping to restore a Riverside Park Island to its pastoral design of a century ago.

Yesterday, a groundbreaking and tree planting ceremony was held at Joan of Arc Island, which extends from 91^st to 95^th Street in Riverside Park, to begin a $59,000 restoration and replanting of this 1.58-acre neighborhood "park within a park." Funds for the project in the form of an oversized check, were presented to the Parks Department and the Riverside Park Fund by the Royco Property Corporation, developers of 222 Riverside Drive.

"I saw old Autumn in the misty morn

Stand shadowless like silence, listening

To silence."

Thomas Hood (1799-1845)