Morningside Park will be City’s tenth scenic landmark. On July 15, 2008, Landmarks voted to designate Morningside Park a scenic landmark, the first since 1983. Designed by Central Park architects Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, the park consists primarily of a stone cliff between 110th and 123rd Streets, separating the neighborhoods of Morningside Heights and Harlem. Built between 1867 and 1895, the 30-acre park also features curvilinear walks, a buttressed stone retaining wall, a pond, and a waterfall. At an April 10, 2007 hearing, Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe expressed strong support for designation. 4 CityLand60 (May 15, 2007).

Morningside Park has undergone some substantial alterations in its history, including a playground installation by Robert Moses in the 1940s. In the 1960s, Columbia University planned to build a gymnasium in the park, a plan that was ultimately quashed by student and community protests. Neglected throughout much of the 20th century, the Parks Department undertook a large restoration project in 1989. (read more…)

If designated, the park would be the City’s first new scenic landmark in over 20 years. On April 10, 2007, Landmarks held a public hearing on the proposed designation of Morningside Park as a scenic landmark. If designated the park would be the City’s tenth scenic landmark and the first since 1983.

Resting on steep cliffs separating Morningside Heights from Harlem, the nearly 30-acre park is bound by West 110th and West 123rd Streets, Morningside Drive, and Manhattan and Morningside Avenues. Frederick Olmsted and Calvert Vaux designed the park in 1873, but Parks rejected their plan. In 1880, Jacob Wrey Mould reworked the Olmsted and Vaux plan, and construction finally began in 1883. When Mould died in 1886, Parks hired Olmsted and Vaux to finish the project. Several speakers at the hearing recalled Samuel Parsons Jr., Parks Superintendent when the project was completed, as writing “perhaps Morningside Park was the most consummate piece of art that [Vaux] ever created.” (read more…)