At the northeast tip of the Bronx is an ear-shaped peninsula framed in the back by The Lagoon, a body of water separating the peninsula from the park’s larger section.
It is a quiet and shallow waterway on the city’s periphery, as natural as it gets in a densely urbanized borough. Its shape is manmade as it once separated islands from the mainland prior to becoming part of the largest land reclamation project in the Bronx.
In the West New Brighton neighborhood of Staten Island, one would see historic cottage homes with spacious lawns and quiet tree-lined streets. The largest park here is Snug Harbor campus through which Harbor Brook flows. Its western tributary is not as easy to access, flowing mostly through private properties.
For a few blocks on Bard Avenue, Logan’s Spring Brook weaves through yards along the road between Moody Place and Wales Place. Continue reading
This past weekend, Governor Andrew Cuomo announced plans to replace the 1.3-mile Sheridan Expressway in the Bronx with a boulevard in an effort to reconnect the residents of the Crotona Park East and West Farms neighborhoods with parks along the Bronx River.
The route of this short interstate spur is similar to that of nearly a dozen other highways within then city: it follows the course of a river.
On Staten Island there are four golf courses, three operated by city, and a private one operating on state-owned land. The Silver Lake Golf Course is located on rolling terrain on the slope of the Silver Lake Reservoir.
The shape of the lake resembles an expanded number eight with a dam across the lake’s midpoint to separate its two basins. Once a natural waterway, it was drained in 1913, lined with concrete and connected to the city’s aqueduct.
In the northeast corner of the Bronx, Seton Falls Park takes up nearly 36 acres of woodland and freshwater marsh with a small stream flowing through the park. Its name was a curiosity for me. How is it that a park named after a waterfall does not have any waterways appearing on maps of the area? Did the stream dry up or was it buried? How big was this waterfall?
On a winter day, the channel flowing through the park is nearly dry and covered with dead leaves. This is the surface remnant of Rattlesnake Brook that flows through Seton Falls Park
At the city’s extreme northeast is Pelham Bay Park, a vast greensward that is three times the size of Central Park. One could not feel more distant from the city when visiting the park’s destinations: Orchard Beach, Bartow-Pell Mansion, Split Rock Golf Course, and the trails of Hunter Island and Twin Islands. On the inland side of the park is the Hutchinson River, known to most New Yorkers as the namesake of the parkway that follows its course.
The river has a history relating to the conflict among Puritan colonists in New England that led to the English annexation of New Netherlands.
Hidden Waters blog 