Making the Commons Less Tragic

City Hall Park Burnished by Conservancy Efforts to Update One of Manhattan’s Oldest Public Spaces

The leadership team of the City Hall Park Conservancy (CHPC) is prioritizing six goals to upgrade the eight-acre park that occupies the triangle formed by Broadway, Chambers Street, and the confluence of Park Row with Centre Street. One of New York’s oldest public green spaces, the park dates from the 1650s, when it was known as the Commons and used as a shared pasture for the livestock of nearby farmers.

At the October 21 meeting of the Waterfront, Parks, and Recreation Committee of Community Board 1 (CB1), Conservancy president April Bovet Krishnan said, “the space has become overlooked and underutilized over the years. The physical spaces are difficult to navigate and not optimized for recreational multiple uses, which has become more important over the past few years because of demographic changes around the park, with many more residents and community users.”

The Conservancy’s first project is repair and replacement of the broken bluestone pathways. The City’s Parks Department has replaced some with concrete, “but the ultimate plan is to choose large format pavers of either concrete or a different material to replace all of the pathways,” Ms. Krishnan said.

“The second goal is the conversion of the gas lights near the fountain to LEDs, which I know CB1 did a resolution for seven years ago, but nothing has happened since,” she said. “This is really very overdue. There’s a lighting issue in the park in general, and I think the conversion of these lights in this heart and center of the park will do much to help with safety and security. It’s also a priority for the City to get the energy savings from LEDs.”

CHPC hopes to raises $140,000 for a quartet of other projects. The Broadway Lawn at the northwest corner of City Hall Park has been reseeded several times by CHPC in recent years, “but it has been destroyed by dogs, mostly during Covid,” said Ms. Krishnan. “So we have a temporary fence, which moves around to different areas of the park as needed. And the lawn is coming back.” This initiative, which will include lawn furniture and work areas for volunteer gardening, is budgeted at $50,000.

Another grassy area, the Commons Lawn, is located in the northeast corner of City Hall Park, outside the entrance to a pre-kindergarten center in the Tweed Courthouse. Ms. Krishnan explained, “we already have a pollinator area there. This summer, it was a little neglected because there’s a huge rat problem by the Horace Greeley statue. We need to get that under control, and then the idea is to expand the pollinator area and use it as a teaching garden for the pre-kindergarten children, and also for the larger community.” This segment of the project, which will feature seating and natural climbing elements, is projected to cost $25,000.

The plaza at the edge of Centre Street, adjacent to the Brooklyn Bridge and always crowded with pedestrians, performers, food vendors, and bicyclists, is known as Northeast Plaza. Because of the proximity of subway tunnels immediately below the surface and other complex infrastructure, the Conservancy’s efforts here will focus on urban planning studies and low-cost design interventions, which are expected to require a budget of $20,000.

Finally, the planting beds surrounding the 1871 Mould Fountain (named for its designed, Jacob Wrey Mould, who also created Central Park’s Bethesda Fountain) will be enhanced with “mostly native plants, but also some beautiful annuals that we plant each spring, along with bulbs in the fall,” Ms. Krishnan said. This proposal is slated to cost $45,000.