Where the city meets the tide: The comeback of Manhattan’s Hudson River waterfront

Image © Friends of Hudson River Park

In New York City, sirens cut through traffic, crowds surge along sidewalks, and the rhythm of the city continues without a break. Yet, right in the heart of Manhattan, an oasis of calm exists. Passing through well-known neighbourhoods like Tribeca, Greenwich Village, Chelsea, and Hell’s Kitchen, the Hudson River Park provides a beautiful space for leisure, connection, recreation and education. Here, at any given moment you will see joggers and cyclists along the waterfront, families enjoying playgrounds, friends chatting over picnics, and people simply watching the river pass by. 

For New Yorkers, scenes like this would have been unimaginable just two decades ago. This now green and vibrant area used to be a dilapidated post-industrial riverfront and a noisy and polluted elevated highway. “The people on the west side of Manhattan really didn’t get to see the river,” says Connie Fishman, executive director of Hudson River Park Friends, a not-for-profit organisation that helps care for the park and the waterway. When the old highway collapsed, it “presented an opportunity to build something really beautiful.”

And indeed, that is what the Hudson River Park became. Since 1998, the Hudson River Park Trust and Friends, a not-for-profit organisation, have been working to create and maintain one of New York City’s most beloved public spaces, four miles of greenway, landscaped piers and open spaces right at the edge of Manhattan’s Hudson River. 

As a result of this and other environmental efforts, the Hudson River is the cleanest it has been in a century. Today, its shores are now a habitat for various forms of wildlife, including birds, oysters, and fiddler crabs. Species that had once disappeared from the area, such as the marsh wren, the bald eagle, and even beavers are now being seen in the lower Hudson River at the Gansevoort Peninsula. “We see birds that come and perch and look for their food, we see fiddler crabs come and burrow in the sand,” says Rachel Swanson, manager of environmental education at the Hudson River Park Trust. “When we build these new spaces, it’s bringing in biodiversity.”

Hudson River Park regularly invites scientists and professors to conduct research projects and teach. Schools frequently visit the park to learn about the river and its ecosystems, and how to protect it. Hudson River Park’s River Project also offers a variety of internship opportunities for high school and college students, allowing them to develop skills in research, data collection, and public speaking. In addition, thousands of volunteers organise clean-ups, maintain the native plantings, and monitor the quality and cleanliness of the water and the species that inhabit it.

In addition, Hudson River Park offers a wide range of amenities right next to Manhattan’s dense central business district – an exceptional resource for local residents.  “We are very conscious of the species in the water but we are also conscious that the main species using the park is us, human beings,” says Connie. “Humans need exercise, they need social lives, they need family lives, and Hudson River Park is great at providing all of those things. It’s hard to find these things in New York, and it keeps people living here.”

Oak supports Hudson River Park Friends through our Special Interest Programme, which provides the space and flexibility to make grants outside of Oak’s other programme strategies. Check out the footage of a beaver spotted recently in the lower Hudson River at the Gansevoort Peninsula, and watch our video about the Hudson River Park here!