Improving Connections: Interim Greenway Expands
October 20, 2011
By: Leigh Trucks
As dedicated runners and bikers may have already discovered, the park’s interim greenway has expanded. The interior path previously ended at Montague Street Extension, where it connected to a protected pathway along Furman Street. Due to the recent configuration of Furman Street into a two-way thoroughfare, this protected pathway was removed. In response, BBP and NYC DOT have worked to create an extended stretch of the park’s interior pathway from Montague Street Extension to Joralemon Street and Pier 6. Park visitors can now travel within the park from Pier 1 all the way to Pier 6. Check out our biking page for details like operating hours.
The interim greenway is critical to achieving connectivity among open park sections, an inherent challenge in building a park in phases. The park’s construction was phased to complete sections adjacent to major entrances first, allowing the public easy access to the new amenities. The result is a non-contiguous park until the connective sections between Pier 1 and Pier 6 can be completed. The interim greenway not only provides this much-desired connection for the public, but it also allows visitors to observe first-hand the transformation of the post-industrial site into a world-class park.
Visitors along the new segment of the path can also view relics of the site’s commercial past. Just south of Montague Street Extension passersby can see rail tracks emerging from the concrete along the water’s edge. These rails were used to transport train cars entering the borough at Pier 4, a 19th century finger pier seen now as a segmented wooden structure partially submerged in the water. Train cars were driven onto barges at the ports of New Jersey and Manhattan and floated across the harbor to be transferred to the rails at Pier 4.
Further south on the pathway towards Pier 6 visitors will be hard-pressed to miss a distinctive bump in the terrain. This is the front end of a commercial scale that was used to weigh large shipments delivered to the active port before its closure in the 1980s.
Image by ©Julienne Schaer
Finally, looking towards the water onto Pier 5, you may catch a glimpse of marine divers working around and under the pier. The divers are responsible for encapsulating the pier’s wooden support pilings with concrete to protect them from degradation by tidal currents and marine termites, called borers. Catch a glimpse of the divers soon, because their work will be finished before year’s end.
