Latest news with #FrederickLawOlmsted
Time Out
29-05-2025
- Time Out
Boston is one of the world's best cities for green space, says new Time Out ranking
Boston might be most famous for its history, sports teams and Irish heritage, but don't overlook its green side. According to a Time out survey, Boston was just ranked the second-best city in the world for green space—just behind Medellín, Colombia. Boston is a dream for those who crave city life without losing touch with nature. Bostonians know what's up when it comes to parks. Let's start with the backbone of Boston's greenery: the Emerald Necklace, a 1,100-acre linear chain of parks designed by Frederick Law Olmsted. It stretches from the historic Boston Common and Public Garden all the way to Franklin Park, home to miles of woodland trails and a zoo. The Arnold Arboretum in Jamaica Plain is a 281-acre haven of curated trees and peaceful paths, perfect for strolling, biking or simply lying in the grass. Head to Jamaica Pond for kayaking and people-watching, or find a quiet spot in Back Bay Fens, where gardens, wetlands and wildflowers coexist just steps from Fenway Park. If you're looking to escape even further, Boston offers easy access to the Blue Hills Reservation, just a short drive or train ride away. With over 125 miles of trails, it's a legit hiking destination right outside city limits. Or take the ferry to the Boston Harbor Islands, where you'll find hiking, picnicking and some of the best skyline views around. Nearly 90 percent of locals who responded to the Time Out survey said Boston's green space is "good" or "amazing"—and they're right. Whether you're tracing history on the Freedom Trail or finding your Zen in the Rose Kennedy Greenway, Boston gives you space to breathe.
The Guardian
05-05-2025
- General
- The Guardian
New York's serene Central Park makeover fixes years of neglect: in pictures
Central Park, designed by renowned US landscape designer Frederick Law Olmsted, first opened to the public in 1858. In the 1860s, a tidal marsh in the park's north-east corner was transformed into the Harlem Meer. The lake, seen here as a skating rinkin 1905, was named for the neighborhood nearby. Photograph: NY Public Library Central Park, circa 1943. The northern reaches of the park, including Harlem Meer, were notable for rugged terrain that made it an especially bucolic escape from the city. Photograph: Central Park Conservancy But the middle of the 20th century brought major redevelopment to the north end of the park, including a project that encased the meer in a concrete retaining wall. Much of the landscape was paved over and built up, including with an ice rink/pool. During the city's financial crisis of the 1970s, this northern section of the park – which is surrounded by less affluent, historically Black and Latino neighborhoods – fell into disrepair. Seen here: Lasker rink and pool, circa 1966. Photograph: Central Park Conservancy In 2021, crews broke ground on a project to replace the Lasker rink and pool with a new recreation center. The $160m Davis Center, which opened in April, offers year-round activities and also restores natural ecologies around the meer. Pictured here: A yoga class on the new Harlem Oval. Photograph: Tobias Everke/The Guardian The Oval is a central element of the redesign. It may look like a lawn, but … Photograph: Tobias Everke/The Guardian … one of the key features of the center is its ability to evolve with the seasons. The lawn will transform into a swimming pool in the summer, as seen in this aerial rendering, and an ice skating rink in the winter. Illustration: Susan T Rodriguez/Central Park Conservancy The new Davis Center building is tucked into a hillside and overlooks the oval and the meer. Passive design reduces the need for artificial heating and cooling. Photograph: Tobias Everke/The Guardian The green roof features skylights that illuminate the main atrium and walkways for pedestrians. Vegetation helps absorb stormwater and heat. Photograph: Tobias Everke/The Guardian A view from inside the Davis Center atrium. Large glass doors open onto the oval. The glass is engineered to minimize reflections, helping to prevent bird collisions. Photograph: Tobias Everke/The Guardian The Huddlestone arch, located nearby, was built in 1866 from massive boulders found in the landscape. Previous designs obscured the arch. The new Davis Center restores the flow of water between the meer and a forested area called the North woods that previous development had severed. Photograph: Tobias Everke/The Guardian The project also resurfaces a hidden stream that flows into the Harlem Meer and reintroduces native flora to the landscape. Large rocks help to prevent soil erosion. Photograph: Tobias Everke/The Guardian There are several new walkways, including a boardwalk that traverses the meer and allows pedestrians to get a close-up look at freshwater marsh plantings. Photograph: Tobias Everke/The Guardian An aerial view of the new Davis Center. Photograph: Central Park Conservancy
Time Out
02-05-2025
- Time Out
When is NYC's Cherry Walk path reopening in Riverside Park?
After months of delays and detours, the Hudson-side path in Riverside Park is back—repaved, re-striped and ready for spring strolls. The wait is finally over: Cherry Walk, the beloved 1.25-mile stretch of the Hudson River Greenway between West 100th and 125th Streets in Riverside Park, is officially reopening this weekend after an eight-month-long closure—and just in time for the tail end of cherry blossom season. Closed since last September, the scenic riverside route underwent a long-overdue makeover, including repaving areas damaged by tree roots and adding new, clearly marked lanes to better separate cyclists from pedestrians. For months, park-goers were forced to detour from the water and climb stairs just to keep moving uptown, an annoying reroute that left walkers, bikers and runners grumbling. 'I used to train for marathons there,' cyclist Marteen Vandersman told The Spirit, the first outlet to report on the reopening. 'It's the best place for it.' Originally slated to reopen mid-April, Cherry Walk's return was delayed by final safety inspections and finishing touches on the lane markings. With little communication from the city, residents grew frustrated. 'It's frustrating because it's been closed for so long,' one West Side walker told the neighborhood publication. 'When we see it from above, it looks done.' Despite the hiccups, the reopening brings renewed access to one of Manhattan's most peaceful pockets—a riverside respite where the breeze cuts through city noise and, yes, the cherry trees bloom in springtime glory. The trees, gifted to the city in 1912 by the Committee of Japanese Residents, are a key reason Cherry Walk made our list of the best places to see cherry blossoms in NYC. With the path's upgrade, the city promises a safer, more user-friendly experience without losing the historic charm that Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux envisioned. Cherry Walk is back—and we couldn't be happier about it. Why was Cherry Walk closed? The path was closed in September 2024 for repaving and safety upgrades. Tree roots had damaged the pavement, and the city aimed to improve accessibility by adding new lane markings to separate cyclists and pedestrians. When does Cherry Walk reopen? Cherry Walk is expected to reopen the weekend of May 3, 2025, following final inspections and completion of all pavement markings.
New York Times
23-04-2025
- General
- New York Times
A Stunning New Pool in Central Park Helps Heal Old Wounds
For more than a century and a half, Central Park has been a leafy barometer of New York's shifting fortunes. Projecting the city's vast ambitions and ideals in the 19th century, it morphed into a Hooverville during the Depression, becoming a beehive of ball fields and 'Be-Ins' during the 1960s. A decade later it was a lawless dust bowl, the poster child for urban decline. 'An unattended Frankenstein,' one city parks commissioner called it. Restoring Central Park's glory has been a labor of decades, its maintenance an endless task. But the $160 million Davis Center, opening to the public Saturday, is a culmination of sorts. It's a spectacular new swimming pool, skating rink and pavilion on six remade acres at the Harlem end of the park — the most dramatic change in years to Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux's pastoral masterpiece of the 1850s. This northern stretch of the park was shamefully neglected when the city was at its nadir and it became the site of a brutal attack that led to one of the more horrendous miscarriages of racial justice in New York's history. So Davis also comes as an act of civic reparation. Originally, Olmsted and Vaux imagined this area as a rustic retreat. A lake called the Harlem Meer was constructed at the northeast corner of the park. Water percolated to the lake from a ravine in the North Woods along a forested watercourse called the Loch, through a massive stone arch called Huddlestone that was held up by the weight of its own immense boulders. In photographs from the turn of the last century the lake looks like it's in the Adirondacks. But as the city densified around the park's edges, public pressure increased to make the park serve more uses. By the 1930s, the Meer had begun to urbanize. This was the age of Robert Moses, New York's omnipotent planning czar, who believed that parks were for recreation. He added a boathouse to the Meer and hardened its shoreline. Playgrounds arrived. By the 1950s, much of the landscape had turned to concrete. A steel fence girdled the lake. Then in the mid-1960s a hulking pool and pool house called Lasker arrived — an engineering novelty at the time because it was one of the rare pools that could convert to a skating rink in winter. Lasker, architecturally, was like a giant bath plug. It choked off the Loch where it emptied into the lake, forcing the waterway into a culvert, despoiling much of what remained of the area's bucolic character. This was when the city's fiscal crisis devastated the northern park. Playgrounds crumbled. The lake silted and filled with debris. The boathouse was ravaged by arson. Millions of New Yorkers still depended on Lasker. It was a lifesaver especially for Harlem residents during sweltering summers and remained so for decades, until it closed just before the pandemic. My sons swam there when they were little. But crowds approximated an N train at rush hour on hot days. The pool leaked. Yusef Salaam, the local City Council representative, who grew up across 110th Street from the Meer, told me the other day that he learned the hard way as a child to wear sneakers when he swam at Lasker so he wouldn't cut his feet on broken glass at the bottom of the pool. During the 1980s, the city sold concessions for its skating rinks in Central Park to the Trump Organization, and Lasker's rink gradually became less and less a place for community skating and ice hockey clinics, more of a rental and fee-based facility. Then one April night in 1989, a Black woman was raped and thrown off a roof in Brooklyn and a white woman jogging on a path near the Meer was raped, brutally beaten and left for dead. New York tabloids noted the incident in Brooklyn. But the Central Park Jogger, as she was referred to at the time, made national headlines, and the Harlem end of the park became synonymous with the city's skyrocketing violence and racial turmoil. Five Black and Latino teenagers, whom the tabloids labeled the Central Park Five, were arrested, wrongfully convicted and imprisoned for the attack on the jogger. Salaam was among them. 'The north end of Central Park for me and for a lot of individuals before 1989 felt like our backyard,' he said. 'But after that, the racism surrounding the park made it a place brown boys could see but not touch. It became an exclusive space.' Davis, the new swimming pool, is the capstone of efforts to heal some of these wounds and rectify mistakes in the redesign of the park. For decades, the Central Park Conservancy, a private nonprofit founded in 1980, has led those efforts. The Meer has been dredged, the lake's shoreline softened, fish returned to its waters, new playgrounds built that blend into the rejuvenated landscape. And in 2022, an entrance to the park at the Meer was renamed the Gate of the Exonerated. Replacing Lasker, the final step, has been by far the most complex project yet, overseen by the conservancy's former chief landscape architect, Christopher Nolan, in collaboration with two New York architecture firms, Mitchell Giurgola and Susan T. Rodriguez Architecture & Design. Community meetings were held to make sure Davis answered the desires of residents who used the pool and rink. Some residents were skeptical about losing even a decrepit neighborhood asset, and worried about a conservancy still associated with the wealthy, whiter end of the park. Construction began during the pandemic. The conservancy raised $100 million in private contributions toward the total cost. The city covered the rest. Davis came in on budget. Corners weren't cut. How often can you say that about a major public infrastructure project? Public-private partnerships are not always successful. The results in this case speak for themselves. The change is stunning. That said, the northern park is not once again the rustic retreat Olmsted and Vaux envisioned in the middle of the 19th century. Times change. But Davis does goes a long way toward repairing the landscape that Lasker altered. Water again flows along a resurfaced stream through Huddlestone Arch around the western edge of the pool and into the Meer. A walking path, which in Lasker's day dead-ended into an asphalt parking lot, follows the new watercourse. It connects to a new bridge and boardwalk that snakes like a ribbon floating over the lake's southern edge. Davis's pavilion is the project's centerpiece, a simple, soaring, dignified space facing the pool through giant glass doors that swivel onto the pool's deck, creating an open-air room with vistas over the lake. There are distant echoes of Bethesda Terrace, the plaza overlooking the lake and Ramble in the middle of the park. pavilion walls are made of rough, stacked, gray Corinthian granite slabs alternating with green Edith Heath tiles. They rise toward slender steel trusses and a C-shaped skylight, which brings a parabola of sun through the pavilion's green roof that bounces off the stone. Lasker glowered like a fortress, dominating the panorama. The pavilion tucks into the brow of a rebuilt hill so it's nearly invisible from many places in the park. You can now meander from the Meer up the hill and find yourself, in what will be the shade of Douglas firs, on a lawn, which is the pavilion's sod roof, suddenly gazing down on the oval pool. It is large enough for 1,000 swimmers, conservancy officials promise. In winter, the pool will turn into a skating rink. Lasker was shuttered half the year, when the rink closed. During shoulder months, Davis converts into an artificial turf field, so it returns the site to year-round use. Deborah Wright is a former head of the Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone and has lived near the Meer for decades, watching the park and neighborhood evolve. 'Sometimes it takes a while to make change,' she told me, 'but it has come.' Davis is 'magnificent, the scale of it,' she said. Salaam, also an optimist, believes it may help 'usher a different mind-set into the community.' 'Often people see new things coming into a neighborhood as gentrification, as exclusionary,' he said. 'In this case we should receive the goodness, because when you give yourself the opportunity to participate in something good, you give yourself permission to live a full life — to find a way forward.'
Boston Globe
19-03-2025
- Sport
- Boston Globe
Judge Matthew Nestor allows new plantiffs' complaint in second day of White Stadium trial
Advertisement No new facts or evidence are being introduced, the plaintiffs said. The defendants strenuously objected to the motion. Nestor ruled that even though the trial is well under way, there was not enough serious prejudice incurred by the defendants to prevent him from ruling for the plaintiffs. The defendants said they needed time to read the complaint in order 'to ponder' whether or not they will introduce new evidence or witnesses. Much of the testimony from the witnesses for the defense focused on how the design of the current White Stadium renovation proposal changed to meet the needs of Boston Public Schools Athletics department and students as well as keep the project aligned with the original design goals of Frederick Law Olmsted. Liza Meyer, the chief landscape architect and interim commissioner of the Boston Parks Department, recounted her concerns over initial plans and renderings for the stadium put forth by the soccer team. The parks department objected to the team's plans to use park pathways for delivery vehicles, to fence off an area in front of the park's Playstead area, build a restaurant too close to the Overlook area and to use digital lighting on the back of a scoreboard that faced the Playstead. All the objections were addressed, said Meyer, who is also an ex officio director of the lead plaintiff, the Emerald Necklace Conservancy. Diana Fernandez Bibeau, deputy chief of urban design for the city, explained how community and design concerns led to modifications that resulted in building wings on each end of both the East and West grandstands. The grandstands' wings will include space for BPS district coaches, office and storage space, conference rooms, a student lounge, sports medicine, strength and conditioning, a community kitchen and ADA accessible locker rooms. Public restrooms will be part of each grandstand. Advertisement Part of the plaintiffs' case concerns the project's impact on areas in Franklin Park that are not located within the 14-acre stadium parcel — these include pathway improvements, utilities work and lighting. Avery Esdaile, senior director of athletics for Boston Public Schools, was asked by the defense about how the use of the stadium by the professional women's soccer team will displace BPS football. 'There are some limits on when we can host games that the stadium usage agreement has identified as after the NWSL season but there are provisions to ask for permission outside that window,' said Esdaile. Beginning this past season, Esdaile said the two affected schools, Boston Latin Academy and Boston Latin School, essentially moved out of the stadium. BLS has been practicing and playing games at Clemente Field in the Fens, with BLA holding the majority of its practice in the Playstead area just south of the stadium and playing games at the old West Roxbury High School. Esdaile also provided glimpses of the decrepit state of White Stadium, which was built in 1949. The athletic department's un-air conditioned offices on the second floor of the West Grandstand were 'extremely hot' in the summer, said Esdaile, cold in the winter plus certain offices endured leaks in the ceiling. Advertisement 'We made the best of it but it was not an ideal place to work,' said Esdaile. The issue of alcohol sales in the stadium during soccer games and outside in the planned restaurant was ruled to be off limits in the trial by the judge. But because Esdaile was asked by the defense about how the athletic department issued permits for stadium use, the judge allowed the plaintiffs to question Esdaile about how BPS-issued permits forbid alcohol possession. Linda Henry, CEO of Boston Globe Media Partners, Michael Silverman can be reached at
