History
Highbridge Park derives its name from New York City’s oldest standing bridge, the High Bridge (1848), which was built to carry the Old Croton Aqueduct over the Harlem River. From the 17th to the 19th centuries, the area was sparsely populated with scattered farms and private estates. During the American Revolution, General George Washington used the Morris-Jumel Mansion, adjacent to the southern end of the park near Edgecombe Avenue and West 160th Street, as his headquarters in September and October of 1776.
The land for Highbridge Park was acquired was assembled piecemeal between 1867 and the 1960s. It was designed in 1888 by Samuel Parsons Jr. and Calvert Vaux.
In the 1890s, the City of New York built a racetrack for horses, the Harlem River Speedway, along the riverbank of the park.
The cliffside area from West 181st Street to Dyckman Street was acquired in 1902, and the parcel including Fort George Hill was acquired in 1928. In 1934 the Department of Parks obtained the majestic Highbridge Tower and the site of old High Bridge Reservoir.
By the early years of the 20th century, upper-middle class New Yorkers would promenade along the wide boardwalks in top hats and bustles. The park provided access to the Harlem River and places for horseback riding and other outdoor sports. By the 1920s dirt and other materials from the build-up of the new Washington Heights neighborhood threatened to ruin the nascent park; a harbinger of bad times to befall the park.
In 1940, Robert Moses turned portions of the Speedway into the Harlem River Drive, a 6-lane highway from the Manhattan end of the Triborough Bridge at 125th Street, to the tunnels under Manhattan to the George Washington Bridge. New fences blocked public recreational access to the riverfront. It was this series of actions, according to New York City Department of Parks & Recreation Commissioner Adrian Benepe, that "ruined" the park.
As New York City was beset with serious financial problems in the 1970s, the neglect of the park accelerated. Huge sections of the park, set aside as natural areas, had been taken over by homeless people who built permanent shacks made of sheet metal and steel pipes driven into the earth. Prostitutes, drug dealers and drug users frequented the park.
By the mid-1980s, Highbridge had become so degraded that in an all-hands cleanup in 1986, 250 tons of garbage and 25 auto wrecks were hauled out. Within days, new wrecks littered the slopes.
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