Carl Shurz Park - Manhattan
Sitting along the promenade or on one of the grassy knolls of Carl Shurz Park looking out over the East River, one can find a bit of peace and tranquility on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. The park runs from roughly 84th Street to 89th Street along East End Avenue. The promenade looks out over Hell Gate, where the East River, the Harlem River, and the waters from Long Island Sound converge. Despite the fact that the FDR drive runs underneath the promenade, the main sounds are those of the river.
The area around Carl Shurz Park was once home to a number of country estates, notably John Jacob Astor. One of the oldest surviving wood structures that still exists in Manhattan was built by merchant Archibald Gracie in 1799 overlooking a scenic bend overlooking the river toward the tip of what is now Carl Shurz Park. The city bought the estate in 1899 and incorporated its eleven acres into the newly formed park in 1910. Gracie Mansion became the official residence of the Mayor of New York in 1942, when Robert Moses convinced Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia to move into it after the Museum of the City of New York was moved from the house to a new building on Fifth Avenue.
When Robert Moses started building the Triborough Bridge, now the RFK bridge, in 1933, he also began construction on the northern end of the East River drive, now the FDR drive as part of the approach roads to the bridge. When he reached Carl Shurz Park and the site Gracie Mansion, he built the road alongside the park and extended the park with a promenade over it. To get up to the promenade from the original park entrance on 86th Street, he built a mirrored set of curved stone steps referred to as the Hoop Stairs leading up to the promenade. The promenade was refurbished in the 1990s with new plantings along the grassy knolls. It is a wonderful place to gaze out over Hell Gate to Roosevelt Island, Astoria, Randalls Island, the Triborough and Hell Gate Bridges. Carl Shurz Park is a relatively small park, but offers some great places to find peace and tranquility with great views of a largely undeveloped part of the city.
