Description

Researcher Frank da Cruz explains here that a major part of the New Deal creation of what is now Riverside Park involved completely re-shaping the land itself. The park was re-engineered from its natural rather steep slope “into two relatively flat areas separated by a retaining wall… The train tracks run behind the retaining wall and under the upper level of the park. The lower level…is on the same level as the river and contains a vast amount of parkland and numerous ball fields, athletic fields, game courts, and playgrounds.” In addition to shaping the land itself, New Deal workers also built “rip-rap walls” of rocks along the riverbank at many points to prevent erosion. As da Cruz says here, all this “was an almost inconceivably massive earth-moving and construction project that required four years and unknown thousands of workers.”