Carl Schurz Park - History

History

The bluff overlooking a curve in the East River at this point was named by an early owner, Siebert Classen, "Hoorn's Hook", for his native Hoorn on the Zuider Zee. The first house on this commanding site was built for Jacob Walton, a few years before the Revolution, when the picturesque site suddenly gained tactical importance in the control of the East River. In February 1776 the house and grounds were commandeered for an American battery of nine guns on the site; this drew British fire, 15 September 1776, in a mopping-up operation to secure all of Manhattan Island following the Battle of Long Island; the bombardment demolished Walton's house and forced an American withdrawal. The British kept an encampment on the site until Evacuation Day, 1783. Archibald Gracie levelled the remains of the star fort and constructed his timber-framed villa in 1799.

The section of the park lying south of 86th Street, where John Jacob Astor had a villa was used as a picnic ground when the northern section of "East River Park" was acquired by the city of New York in 1891; the easternmost block of 86th Street was acquired subsequently, and the street de-mapped.

The Park was reconstructed in 1935 by Robert Moses. The Park's restoration from its almost derelict state in the 1970s was due to the energies of a neighborhood group, the not-for-profit Carl Schurz Park Association (incorporated 1974), formed originally to clean up the Park's single playground. Carl Schurz Park served as the location for the climactic fight scene in Spike Lee's 2002 film 25th Hour, starring Edward Norton and Philip Seymour Hoffman.