A New Old Park Opens with a Flair

 by Carl Glassman


It was Laurie Anderson and Lou Reed who headlined the unique free concert given, literally, on Canal Street, near West Street, last month. But it was a verdant triangular park across the street, and five north Tribeca residents who had fought to create it, who were the real stars of the evening.

So as Anderson, Reed and other artists performed on Oct. 21 for a crowd of about 500, celebrating the official opening of the $2.7 million oasis, this tightly-knit neighborhood group played the modest but happy hosts. They were the ones, after all, who five years ago gazed upon an asphalt island for garbage trucks and imagined the long-forgotten park that had once been there, and is now reborn.

The story of how this small group-Barbara Siegel, Margot Osborne, Richard Barrett, Carole De Saram and Jana Haimsohn-returned the land to its rightful use began in 1999, as they prepared to fight against a state plan to expand the number of lanes on Canal Street. In the course of mounting a lawsuit, together with then-City Councilwoman Kathryn Freed, the group discovered that the Sanitation Department's homely little parking triangle had been a park long ago and, legally, should be one still.

The triangle became a park, designed by Samuel Parsons, in 1870, and it was redesigned 18 years later with Calvert Vaux, whose credits include Central Park. Though less than two-thirds of an acre, it was lushly planted and masterfully designed with a gently curving walkway, a model for a city with few public parks for its teeming immigrant population.

The park remained until 1921, when the state took over the land to construct the Holland Tunnel.

Not only did the neighborhood group discover the park's former existence, but they also unearthed an obscure law that said that only an act of the state legislature could rightfully take it away.

Laurie Anderson. Photo Carl Glassman
 
Lou Reed. Photo Carl Glassman

With hundreds of hours of research and some sophisticated political wrangling under their belts, the neighborhood fighters prevailed in court.

"We're a very egalitarian group," said Barbara Siegel, an artist who lives on Washington Street near the park. "Each of us have different areas of expertise and we worked our butts off."

The state agreed to pay for a new park, inspired by the design of the old Canal Street Park, but twice the size.

"It's a happy story of getting back a park that disappeared," said Adrian Benepe, the Parks Department's commissioner. "That doesn't happen very often."