12Mar

Labyrinth Chosen “Hidden Gem of NYC”

The Battery Labyrinth

Seth Kugel, The New York Times Frugal Traveler chose The Battery Labyrinth as one of the “5 Hidden Gems of New York City.”  He writes: “The Labyrinth for Contemplation in Battery Park. Just under a decade has passed since inlaid stones were placed in the form of a circular labyrinth in a grove of cedar trees, but somehow, I’d been to Battery Park at least a dozen times since then and never noticed it. But after a friend tipped me off, there it was in plain sight, just east of the striking cut-out of a soldier at the Korean War Veterans Memorial and just northeast of Castle Clinton, where you get your tickets for the Statue of Liberty. The labyrinth is not a maze, really – there’s only one route through, and you can’t get lost – but something about having to follow the path transports you out of downtown Manhattan and into your own thoughts — though look up and you can see the Statue of Liberty in one direction and the rising One World Trade Center in the other.”

18Jan

The Battery Charges Up

Nice article in The Broadsheet Daily Today. See below.

Battery Charges Up

Gehry Playground and Seaglass Carousel Among Amenities Coming Soon to Historic Park

The Battery Conservancy, the non-profit group that maintains the City park (adjoining Battery Park City) on Manhattan’s southern tip, is entering the final stretch of its design and construction phase this year. By 2014, the Conservancy hopes to implement its 25-acre Master Plan. “We have a sense of completing the culmination of the landscape in 2012-2013,” said Warrie Price, the Conservancy’s president since helping found the organization in 1994.

“We’re 97 percent complete or in construction now,” added Ms. Price. “The one-acre Frank Gehry play space is the next-to-last piece to be designed,” she added, in a reference to one of the park’s most anticipated features. Mr. Gehry is a renowned architect whose local work includes Eight Spruce Street, and whose fame is such that the developer of that building (one of the tallest residential structures in the Western Hemisphere) changed its name from “Beekman Tower” to “New York by Gehry” to capitalize on the designer’s cachet. In 2007, Mr. Gehry agreed to design his first playground, free of charge, for the Battery Conservancy. At the time, the project was projected to cost $10 million. More recently, the Conservancy circulated a request for qualifications for another firm to implement Mr. Gehry’s design. The deadline for submissions was January 4, and the Conservancy now plans to announce the winning selection on February 27. Ms. Price said, “we had a wonderful response from 17 firms, and we’re thrilled with the teams that were brought together. People are excited about building Frank Gehry’s conceptual and schematic design.” She added that “we’re not going to go public with it until the selected team reviews the design and we have a buildable plan.”

Read the rest and see some great new photos here

30Dec

A more livable lower Manhattan emerging

 

Check out this excerpt from Who Wouldn’t Want to Occupy It? The Emergence of a More Livable Lower Manhattan
New York Magazine, December 11, 2011

Photo by Iwan Baan. Graphic from New York Magazine.

Greenery
Everywhere you look, a new park has popped up.

The year’s most obvious lower-Manhattan news is the reconstruction of the World Trade Center (1) site and the inauguration of Memorial Plaza, which will eventually be joined by 1 World Trade Center, four additional towers, and the Santiago Calatrava–designed World Trade Center Transportation Hub.

For the locals, however, the action is in Battery Park, where an entire acre has been set aside for the Urban Farm (2), composed of 80 plots of farmers’-market-bound organic vegetables, herbs, and flowers, tended by kids from local public schools. Frank Gehry has settled in here, as well, but not to design another blockbuster building. His Battery Playspace (3) (Battery Park, State St.), is set to replace the current, outdated playground in early 2013….Just north of the South Ferry terminal is the revamped and relandscaped Peter Minuit Plaza (9 Battery Park, nr. White Hall Terminal) (7), home to a picnic-ready pavilion designed by Dutch architect Ben van Berkel….

Please read the entire article to see all of the other exciting things that are happening Downtown these days.  We are thrilled to be part of it!

12Sep

Mayor Bloomberg plants a tree at the Battery

To commemorate the 10th anniversary of 9/11/01 and symbolize the resilience of Lower Manhattan, Mayor Bloomberg planted a pin oak in the Battery with Warrie Price, Julie Menin of Community Board 1, Congressman Nadler,  Comptroller John Liu,  State Senator Daniel Squadron, and Council Member Margaret Chin

07Sep

A New Downtown

Frommer’s slideshow article “New York City’s New Downtown: 10 Years in the Making” highlights the growth of downtown Manhattan since 9/11 and features the Battery’s New Amsterdam Pavilion as a must-see! As the 10th anniversary of 9/11 approaches, we are reflecting on how much the Battery has changed and grown since that day and are so proud to be part of a vibrant, thriving downtown.

18Jul

The Battery Farmstand

The Battery Farmstand

All the busy farmers at the Battery Urban farm are excited to announce the opening of The Farmstand at its regular hours! After a soft opening last Tuesday, The Farmstand will return every THURSDAY from 12 noon until 6 pm for the remainder of the harvest, and share with its patrons all the delicious vegetables growing on the farm. Come this Thursday and expect to find cucumbers, eggplants, collard greens, basil, other herbs, zucchini flowers and perhaps a few of our first tomatoes! All prices are suggested donations, and all proceeds will go directly back into the farm. See you Thursday!

01Jul

Rachael Ray Visits the Battery!

Rachael Ray Visits the Battery!

It was an exciting week here at the Battery! Rachael Ray, chef and TV personality came to the Urban Farm with her staff to learn about the project, talk with Warrie, and film a segment for her website! She was a delightful guest and we hope she’ll come back and visit whenever she is in the neighborhood.

29Jun

Catching Our Breath after a Busy Spring Farming Frenzy

Catching Our Breath after a Busy Spring Farming Frenzy

We haven’t had a chance to even tell you too much what’s been going on at the Farm lately. From the moment we started the farm, we’ve been so busy planting a full array of heirloom/organic vegetables and supporting the eight neighborhood schools we invited to tend their own berms. There is SO much food being grown in the space here, it’s amazing. But we just wanted to take the opportunity to recap how fast we went from open lawn to farm:

Berms on Opening Day

Farm berms on Opening Day waiting to be planted.

In the cold, late Winter, we started with a pile of dark, healthy, rich soil, then with the help of strong backs and arms of our volunteers, we shaped them into 100+ empty berms.

Through a chilly spring planted early crops of peas, arugula, radishes, beets, turnips, and numerous varieties of lettuce and greens. We also worked hard at getting our summer plants started in the cold frames while we waiting for warmer weather to arrive before we could put them in the ground.

Thinning early lettuce

Thinning early lettuce

It took a while for the ground to warm up, but by May we were planting summer squashes, beans, edamame, sunflowers, and of course, keeping up with the new and interesting weeds that keep appearing. There is one in particular, an edible weed called Lamb Quarters, that keeps showing up aplenty, and it has been enjoyed, sautéed with a bit of garlic and salt, on more than one of our farmer’s plates this spring.

Red lettuce

Bed of lettuce

 

Some think Summer officially starts when the first tomato plant goes into the ground. Finally in May, when the warm weather was here to stay and the night temperature no longer risked dipping below 50 degrees, we planted the tomatoes, peppers, eggplant and herbs!! We planted a few dozen of our own heirloom plants we started from seed, as well as the beautiful tomato and eggplant plants generously donated by Pamela Page, including rare heirloom varieties with names like, Blonde Kopfchen, Aunt Ruby’s German Green, Henderson Pink.

 

 

All in all, there are close to 100 different varieties growing on the farm—and that’s not counting the types of vegetables that the schools and the Adopt-a-plot farmers are growing in their own berms.

19Nov

Student Expressions

This summer, college-bound winners of grants from Scholarship Plus came to learn about the work of the Battery Conservancy and experience the historic waterfront. We want to share with you some of their impressions:

Tevin Jackson, bound for Brown University, wrote:
“One of the things that really stuck with me is when you said: ‘There is going to come a time in your life when all your talents are going to come together at this one moment.’ This really struck me because at the moment I have so many interests, and as I pursue them I gain many different skills and talents. Hearing your statement made me realize that sometime in the future all these different skills will be put to use to produce something wonderful…”

Prince Antwi, onto Harvard, wrote:
“You also gave me the opportunity to be on a boat for the first time in my life, and the much spoken-of opportunity to see the “Statue of Liberty,” which I had never seen prior to our visiting. As a recent immigrant from Ghana, Africa, it was indeed awe-inspiring to be on the boat and listen to the recording on America’s immigration history.”

30Nov

2 Million New Records Added to CastleGarden.org

In May 2009, The Battery Conservancy funded a major upgrade to its CastleGarden.org, which is free to all users. Two million new entries were added to the existing 9.2 million immigration records – all of which pre-date Ellis Island and provide the most comprehensive record of immigration into New York City between 1820 and 1892.
New navigational improvements to the website include the ability to search by ship, port of origin, date of arrival, first or last name, occupation, and origin. Previously, users could only search by first or last name. With the upgrade, new information is available on village, province or region of origin, destination and port of embarkation.
CastleGarden.org has an additional 2.38 million records of immigrants to be digitized, bringing the total database to 13.58 million:
- 1 million Scandinavian
- 880,000 Irish and UK
- 500,000 Austrian and Hungarian
Support CastleGarden.org and its historic work today! Donate online and allow The Battery Conservancy to continue to update and maintain this invaluable database.

We are grateful to the project’s founding supporters: American Express, Burch-Safford Foundation, Emigrant Savings Bank, Logany LLC, May and Samuel Rudin Foundation, and U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.

Immigrants Disembarking at the Battery (1855)

Immigrants Disembarking at the Battery (1855)

In May 2009, The Battery Conservancy funded a major upgrade to its CastleGarden.org, which is free to all users. Two million new entries were added to the existing 9.2 million immigration records – all of which pre-date Ellis Island and provide the most comprehensive record of immigration into New York City between 1820 and 1892.

New navigational improvements to the website include the ability to search by ship, port of origin, date of arrival, first or last name, occupation, and origin. Previously, users could only search by first or last name. With the upgrade, new information is available on village, province or region of origin, destination and port of embarkation.

CastleGarden.org has an additional 2.38 million records of immigrants to be digitized, bringing the total database to 13.58 million.

Support CastleGarden.org and its historic work today! Donate online and allow The Battery Conservancy to continue to update and maintain this invaluable database.

We are grateful to the project’s founding supporters: American Express, Burch-Safford Foundation, Emigrant Savings Bank, Logany LLC, May and Samuel Rudin Foundation, and U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.