If you’re not looking for it, it’s easy to miss Septuagesimo Park.
At .04 acres, this slender gap in a row of brownstones on West 71st Street (hence the name) has been called the city’s smallest official park.
By contrast, Central Park has 843 acres, and Pelham Bay Park in the Bronx is three times Central Park’s size.
This postage stamp of a park, originally known as “71st Street Plot,” owes its existence to Mayor John Lindsay.
“New York City acquired this property through condemnation on March 28, 1969,” explains the Parks Department website. “Mayor Lindsay’s vest pocket park initiative supervised the landscaping of the parcel.”
By 1981, as the Upper West Side was emerging from decades of decline, it was put under the jurisdiction of the Parks Department. In 2000, commissioner Henry Stern gave it an illustrious new name that sounds like a cafe in Rome.
In New York, of course, small is good. Septuagesimo Park’s one bench-lined lane is framed by gardens and a few shady trees—all you really need to take in summer in New York.
[Photos: NYC Parks Department]
Tags: best small parks NYC, New York City's smallest park, pocket parks New York City, Septuagesimo Uno Park, Upper West Side parks
June 27, 2014 at 2:45 am |
I think Winston Churchill Park has to hold the record for smallest.
Jay
June 27, 2014 at 3:15 pm |
I’ve been loving this park for years!
June 29, 2014 at 10:10 pm |
Septuagesima Sunday is the name for the ninth Sunday before Easter and was the day things were going to get done that had been put off forever.
November 28, 2016 at 2:46 am |
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