J. Hood Wright Park is a park of the

New York City Department of Parks and Recreation The New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, also called the Parks Department or NYC Parks, is the department of the government of New York City responsible for maintaining the city's parks system, preserving and maintaining the ecolog ...

which is located between Fort Washington and Haven Avenue, and between West 173rd and 176th Streets in the Washington Heights neighborhood of

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

. The park includes a playground – which features a model of the nearby George Washington Bridge, which is visible from the park, basketball courts, ballfields, and a recreation center, as well as a dog walk, a cave in the natural rock formations which form the park's western boundary, and an installation of a piece of modern sculpture, "3000 AD Diffussion Piece" by

Terry Fugate-Wilcox Tery Fugate-Wilcox (born 1944) (also known as Terry Fugate-Wilcox before the 1980s when he "donated a surplus ''r'' to charity"), is a minimalist and natural-process postminimalist (Actual Art)-ist painter and sculptor best known for three monum ...

. The park is named for the man who formerly owned the site, J. Hood Wright (1836-1894), a banker, financier and philanthropist born in Philadelphia, who lived in a mansion on 175th Street and Haven Avenue. Wright anonymously gave money to convert the local subscription library into a free library which became a branch of the

New York Public Library The New York Public Library (NYPL) is a public library system in New York City. With nearly 53 million items and 92 locations, the New York Public Library is the second largest public library in the United States (behind the Library of Congress ...

. The city acquired the land by ''

eminent domain Eminent domain (United States, Philippines), land acquisition (India, Malaysia, Singapore), compulsory purchase/acquisition (Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, United Kingdom), resumption (Hong Kong, Uganda), resumption/compulsory acquisition (Austr ...

'' in 1925, specifically to build a park, which the neighborhood was lacking in. It has been upgraded and renovated, and the

cupola In architecture, a cupola () is a relatively small, most often dome-like, tall structure on top of a building. Often used to provide a lookout or to admit light and air, it usually crowns a larger roof or dome. The word derives, via Italian, from ...

of the hexagonal recreation center was restored in 2013. The park is supported by the Friends of J. Hood Wright Park, a neighborhood organization.

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External links

* {{Protected areas of New York City Parks in Manhattan Washington Heights, Manhattan