Teardrop Park

Battery Park City
New York, NY

Submitted by: Ethan Kent

A $17 Million public park that serves primarily as a private courtyard arboretum to the surrounding high-rise development.

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Why It Doesn't Work

A beautiful and serene naturalistic experience, this park effectively mimics a Northeast forest. Material and plant selection are extremely thoughtful and attractive. But despite the landscape mastery that this park showcases, there is a very basic problem: Almost any other public use of this area would serve New York better than Teardrop Park. Serene as it is, there is almost nothing to do in this park and nothing to attract the people who might use it. It functions mostly as a private park for nearby building residents, and even these few users would be better served by a multitude of other uses instead of Teardrop Park. Besides the security guard, there were 3 people in the park on a beautiful July evening (about 7PM), and two of them were engaged in intimate physical activity.

Indeed, the park is not inviting because its spaces feel threatening--many parts are obscured from view as you experience it, and at every turn you might run into something unexpected. There is little to reward the few brave souls who do explore the park: Most turns reveal nothing more than shrubs and another mysterious turn. Other than the slide, the only thing you can do here is sit on an isolated patch of grass, or on some of the lonely benches that face the confined pathways and passive building walls. The real mystery is how the landscape architect expected humans to participate in this space – or perhaps they hoped to deter any use. If that is they case, they were certainly successful.

The park's success diverges signifcanlty from the adjacent Rockefeller Park which is perhaps the best used and best loved section of Battery Park, with the broadest range of users.

Interviewing the security guard, I learned that teardrop park is basically a safe park, but that it usually gets very little use. The only area that gets regular use is the slide, which only gets used by children who most likely live in adjacent buildings. According to her, this activity is restricted from 3-6PM. She noted that the isolated grassy lawn area is almost never used, and informed us that most complaints come from the building residents, who complain that they cannot walk their dogs there.

Evaluating within the narrow solution set that defines Teardrop Park, this park perhaps deserves some of the praise it has received. This solution set is actually quite appealing to many and I would say much more appealing than the even narrower solution sets applied by most of the other famous landscape architects that have come out the Harvard Graduate School of Design. The extraordinary skills, knowledge base and vision of this firm (Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates) should and could be used very effectively in many parks around the world, but allowing this rather narrow solution set to dominate a park environment is doing a major disservice to the communities they are meant to serve – even if the community they are most concerned about serving is their own landscape architecture community.

What Puts Teardrop Park in the Hall of Shame?

Hard to find, hard to see into, and unfriendly to navigate, this is not a park that was designed to encourage pedestrian access.

While perhaps aesthetically attractive in its attempt to mimic a Hudson Valley setting, it chooses not to mimic the aspects of urban parks that attract human beings and make them feel comfortable.

The slide is a fun use but only for a small part of the population and it is isolated from other uses. Otherwise, besides sitting, there are not many other things you will find people doing in this park.

The only social behavior this park facilitates would be private or illicit behavior. Almost all locations are secluded. Decidedly private, this is not a park that you go to to participate constructively in public.

History & Background

"The dedication of Teardrop Park in Battery Park City is part of our vision for rebuilding lower Manhattan as a true mixed use community," said Governor George E. Pataki. "This park adds more green space to downtown and is another great example of ‘green’ building and environmentally-sensitive planning. With its rolling hills and use of native stone throughout the site, Teardrop Park will certainly be one of the most visited green spaces in New York City. I want to congratulate James Gill, Tim Carey and Michael Van Valkenburgh and thank them for giving us this wonderful oasis."

Over 1,900 tons of bluestone, granite and limestone was used in the construction of Teardrop, all of it obtained from New York Hudson Valley towns including Alcove, New Paltz, Delni, and Champlain. There are over 16,871 plants and trees at the park, 88 percent of which is native to New York State. Over 50 percent of Teardrop’s materials came from within 500 miles of the site. “I wanted visitors to feel like they stepped into a glen in the Catskills,” said Carey.

Teardrop Park, designed by Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, features many different kinds of landscapes, including its centerpiece, a 27-foot bluestone wall meant to evoke a mountainside. The wall will develop water on its jagged rock face during the summer, and icicles during the winter. It also has a portal in its center made of limestone for visitors to pass through to the other side.

"The idea of public parks emerged from the social discourse of the early nineteenth century and began with Olmsted and Vaux's Central Park. It's a great honor to be able to design a park for New York City at this time in our history that continues and adds to the important role of parks in our democracy,” said Michael Van Valkenburgh.

The Battery Park City Authority is a public benefit corporation created by the New York State Legislature in 1968 to develop a 92-acre site at the southwestern tip of Lower Manhattan. Parcels are leased to developers who build in accordance with BPCA guidelines, which now incorporate “green” provisions mandating state-of-the-art environmental specifications to maximize energy efficiency and minimize water usage, among other provisions.

Contact Info:

http://www.batteryparkcity.org/

User Comments:

> Add your own comment about Teardrop Park

02/03/06 Ethan Kent said:: I would like to nominate Teardrop Park in lower Manhattan as a "great public park" in PPS's designation of such places. Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates has taken extraordinary care there to create a place that: makes best use of available sunlight for the benefit of plants and people; provides a park section tailor-made for young children at their scale; provides a rich, beautiful, highly concentrated, and diverse pallet of plant materials; concentrates a sense of nature's presence by sculpting elements like rock outcroppings using NY state rock; provides a place where people will want to and will actually gather, linger, and enjoy.
William S. Saunders, Editor
Harvard Design Magazine
Harvard Design School
06/22/06 sk murrow said:: I disagree with this review of Teardrop Park. I found your site as I was telling a friend how great it is, and then I was looking for images of it and found this negative review. I love the park because it is shaded by the tall buildings. My 3 year old and 7 year old both love it - we live in Spanish Harlem but have made the trip 3 times to play there. They love the extra long slide, the huge sand pit, and the water area is unique and fun. The fact that it is sheltered and kind of hidden is a positive. NYC doesn't have many places to play that have that feeling of being in a different kind of space.
10/02/06 Robin Hanway said:: I disagree with the review, except to the extent that the park is somewhat hard to find, and yes, it is surrounded by non-descript residential towers. The park is a beautiful combination of adventure playground and pastoral park, and evocative of the rolling natural landscape (which is often ignored due to the metaphorical flattening of the street grid) without being Olmstedian. The park also displays a wonderful contrast between the natural and the artificial- for example, the "sand" in the water feature area is actually a speckled recycled rubber, and the exit stairs are the diamond punched steel seen in New York sidewalks and subways. I found it inventive and evocative. The June day that I visited the park I also found it to be very well utilized by both children and adults. I admired the custom slide, which is just the kind of outsized structure that delights kids. The planting was thick and well chosen, and I applaud the use of non-potable water for irrigation. Lighten up on the jargon and go back for another visit.
10/20/06 joe maurer said:: I'm sure glad PPS had nothing to do with this one! I really enjoyed this space. An old lady friend who lives downtown comes here to practice climbing on the rocks. NO kidding. And where, Mr. Smarty pants, are you going to see old ladies doing that downtown? Once there was a fellow playing guitar in that space - the sound was amazing! My friends and I enjoyed it in the winter - had a warm snack. You fail to mention adjacent uses - do you think as those change - the park use might also see different use? Teardrop Park South is going to be built soon. I disagree that public spaces should be EVERYTHING for EVERYONE. This park invokes the imagination - it is odd to see this type of rock outcropping here. I liked that it was hidden. Hard to find at first yes, but once you find it, it orients one in an otherwise out-of-scale downtown. Lastly, how LAME to take a photo of people in love and use it jazz up your dull writing - if you didn't notice, they had their clothes on. That is titillation, not illicit behavior.
02/23/07 Ethan Kent said:: Certainly the park has all the good qualities that these comments point out. Beyond the general conclusion, none of the points in these comments seem to contest any of the assertions in the above review, and many of them echo the same abstract language that is perpetuating the epidemic of bad designs all over the world.
As for illicit behavior, nowhere above does it claim the affection was illicit, just that this park design is very compatible with illicit behavior. Hey affection in parks is a great thing that we should be encouraging more of, and we often show pictures of it to do so. When affection is the only thing going on, it is reflective of the fact that this park is no more inviting than someoneÂ’s private suburban (well landscaped) backyard.
09/02/07 matthew campau said:: Because I'm a fan of Teardrop Park and have visited on many occasions, I'm surprised by this agressively negative review. Drawn by a desire to go to a playground that wasn't all hardscape and plastic jungle gyms, I visited recently with my four year-old daughter and a friend of hers. Although we had to take a long train ride from Brooklyn to get there and the girls were a bit grumpy, they immediately perked up when we got to the park. They loved the big drippy wall, they thought the tunnel was cool, they were all over the spray area and, yes, they spent a lot of time on the slide. The slide is not just an isolated event, however, it is an activity generator where children climb rocks, stairs, or numerous other pathways to get back up to the top. On the hot August day that we were there the park was swarmed with wet, smiling children running in every direction. I had to drag the girls away despite the fact that they had been actively playing for well over an hour. From a child's perspective this is a really great and engaging park. Where's the shame in that?
12/10/07 lulu t said:: The December 2007 issue of Landscape Architecture also has issues with the PPS review of Teardrop Park and has written up a good article and study that counters PPS' claims. I've never visited, but it looks like a beautiful refuge from city living.
01/25/08 Jonathan Schilk said:: I haven't visited Teardrop Park. All I have to judge by is your article and your collection of photos. It appears to be a well designed oasis in the middle of an urban center. I see an interesting array of spaces that delight the eyes; I see a variety of textures, colors and forms. I'm curious about the time of day, or the day of the week the photos were taken. Could be that you weren't there when the people were, and the people were there when you weren't. How many times did you visit it before you wrote the article? I think your review is a little harsh.
05/11/08 Jeanne Boyd said:: As a resident of the neighborhood, I'd like to know what's wrong with a "beautiful and serene naturalistic experience"? Teardrop Park is a perfect addition to this quiet residential neighborhood. The city is full of annoying, overcrowded tourist traps. That's the last thing I want, literally, in my own back yard.
07/05/08 paul sagawa said:: My family lives in one of the high rise residential buildings adjacent to the park and our children use the park almost every day. First, I would object to the characterization of the park as underused - during times when children are not in school and the weather is clement, the park is absolutely packed with kids using all of the facilities, including the large lawn and the paved paths. On weekends, there is a large contingent of families from other neighborhoods that visit the park as a destination - the giant slide, sand area, natural water play area, and toddler area are unique in New York. Second, I walk through this park nearly every time I go to and from my apartment and get enormous joy from the beauty of the park's landscaping. In my family's view, Teardrop Park is one of the very BEST public spaces in all of New York and it is absolutely shocking to us that anyone would nominate it for a hall of shame.
08/13/08 Michael R said:: From my blog http://whatyourdonotknowbecauseyouarenotme.blogspot.com/ Today we visited some more playgrounds. First we stooped at Washington Market Park. It was a very nice place, lots of shad some climbing toys and squirting water stuff. None of these fun things were listed in their website, but their website did win some awards. After we got some snacks at the nearby farmers market, we set off to our goal Teardrop Park. There was a lot of info on the park on the Internet. The Downtown Express like it. GoCityKids said it was close to some nice bathrooms. The Harvard School of Design like it a lot. Yelp said it is hard to find, I like to find hard to find places, they are rarely crowded. But, the Internet review that got my attention was from The Project for Public Spaces, they pointed out that the park is built to look like nature as opposed to being a fun place. The kids had a great time, but I could easily tell that it was not designed by anybody who ever spent time with an 8 year old. Normally, you can put a bolder 10 or 15 feet from the bottom of a slide. But, if you put water anywhere near a slide it will be used as a lubricator (accelerator). All the caregivers at once had to get the kids off the slide. There was an overwhelming sense that some little kid was about to bash their skull in. That did not happen. Today.... So we walked south a little to Nelson A Rockerfella Park The GoCityKids review really hits it, this place was sweet. They missed the fact that they lend out toys, games and stuff like Hulla-hoops. Sweet
10/26/08 Jennifer Vaccaro said:: I visited Teardrop Park last week and I was completely blown away by it. I thought it was beautifully designed. The materials are unique to the urban environment and used in a very creative way. I particularly like the stone retaining wall along the path that is comprised of bluestone set on its end instead of stacked traditionally. The series of surprises created by the circulation pattern are an asset, not a deficit. If you could walk into the park and immediately see into every part of it- what makes you want to walk further in? A sense of mystery is a good thing. Further, I was delighted by the tall buildings all the way around the perimeter of the park. If you look up at the way they frame the park, the shape is very interesting, and I had the sensation of being in a vast atrium which I rather enjoyed. It was like being outdoors and indoors at the same time. It was not dark or gloomy at all. The reflected light from the buildings lit the park up very well. My parents are visiting NYC this weekend and I strongly recommended teardrop park as a spot to visit. We need more unique parks like this. Not every park has to be a Bryant Park, which is amazing in its own right. Can't both spaces be equally successful for completely different reasons and uses? So what if the park is tucked away and geared more for local residents- it seems to me that that area is pretty densely populated with high rise apartments. Having a local neighborhood park that is quiet and restful is an asset to those residents. Jennifer Vaccaro Student ASLA Temple University
08/07/09 tallulah bell said:: Tear Drop park is a wondrous 'secret' entrance to Battery Park. I found it by accident and was simultaneously apprehensive and excited. I felt like Alice Through The Looking Glass or Mary Lennox entering The Secret Garden. Was I trespassing or perhaps wandering into a dangerous situation? A cave, a tunnel and then suddenly a meadow walled in by nondescript high-rises which, as a backdrop to this little piece of nature, are suddenly transformed into something surreal. I love the fact that there isn't 'much to do here', that you can find private nooks and crannies, that so much is wedged into such a relatively small space. This park is a treasure. The fact that it's a bit difficult to find is to the designer's credit. I'm sure everyone who discovers it feels it's his or her own little secret.