Sara Delano Roosevelt Park is a park in the

Lower East Side The Lower East Side, sometimes abbreviated as LES, is a historic neighborhood in the southeastern part of Manhattan in New York City. It is located roughly between the Bowery and the East River from Canal to Houston streets. Traditionally an im ...

of the

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 ...

borough A borough is an administrative division in various English-speaking countries. In principle, the term ''borough'' designates a self-governing walled town, although in practice, official use of the term varies widely. History In the Middle Ag ...

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 ...

. The park, named after

Sara Roosevelt Sara Ann Roosevelt ( Delano; September 21, 1854 – September 7, 1941) was the second wife of James Roosevelt I (from 1880), the mother of President of the United States Franklin Delano Roosevelt, her only child, and subsequently the mother ...

(1854–1941), the mother of President

Franklin Delano Roosevelt Franklin Delano Roosevelt (; ; January 30, 1882April 12, 1945), often referred to by his initials FDR, was an American politician and attorney who served as the 32nd president of the United States from 1933 until his death in 1945. As the ...

, stretches north–south along seven blocks between East Houston Street on the Lower East Side and Canal Street in

Chinatown A Chinatown () is an ethnic enclave of Chinese people located outside Greater China, most often in an urban setting. Areas known as "Chinatown" exist throughout the world, including Europe, North America, South America, Asia, Africa and Aust ...

, bordered by Chrystie Street on the west and

Forsyth Street Forsyth Street runs from Houston Street south to Henry Street in the New York City borough of Manhattan. The street was named in 1817 for Lt. Colonel Benjamin Forsyth. Forsyth Street's southernmost portion, south of Canal Street, runs parall ...

on the east. The park is operated and maintained by 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 ecolo ...

. The park cuts off Stanton,

Rivington Rivington is a village and civil parish of the Borough of Chorley, Lancashire, England, occupying . It is about southeast of Chorley and about northwest of Bolton. Rivington is a rural area consisting primarily of agricultural grazing land, ...

, Broome and Hester Streets between Chrystie and Forsyth Streets, and is crossed by Delancey and

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Streets.

History

The site was previously occupied by walk-up apartments and before that, an African-American burial ground. Originally, part of it was the Dutch Reformed Church Cemetery. The land was originally acquired by the city of New York in 1929 for the purpose of widening Chrystie and Forsyth Streets and building low-cost housing, but was instead used for parkland. The new park was named for Sara Roosevelt, the mother of Franklin D. Roosevelt, in 1934, despite her written objection. It was designed under the leadership of newly installed Parks Commissioner

Robert Moses Robert Moses (December 18, 1888 – July 29, 1981) was an American urban planner and public official who worked in the New York metropolitan area during the early to mid 20th century. Despite never being elected to any office, Moses is regarded ...

, landscape architect

Gilmore D. Clarke Gilmore David Clarke (July 12, 1892 – August 8, 1982''New York Times'', August 10, 1982, p. B19: Gilmore D. Clarke, 90, is dead; designed major public works'.) was an American civil engineer and landscape architect who designed many park ...

, and architect

Aymar Embury II Aymar Embury II (June 15, 1880 – November 15, 1966) was an American architect. He is best known for commissions from the City of New York from the 1930s through to the 1950s. In this period, Embury frequently worked with Robert Moses in t ...

. The original design placed an emphasis on athletic fields and "active recreation" spaces for children, such as wading pools, with separate areas for boys and girls. In later decades, community groups adapted the park to various uses. In the 1980s, the park suffered from crime and drug problems, until a community effort revitalized it. The Sara D. Roosevelt Park Coalition, formed in 1982, established the M’finda Kalunga community garden in 1983, and has initiated several other initiatives. Another group, the Forsyth Garden Conservancy, has built several smaller gardens inside the park since the mid-1990s, including the Hua Mei Bird Garden, where songbird owners congregate. Between 2005 and 2022 the park received $11.4 million of improvements from the parks department. In 2022, ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' reported that the park had become "a catch basin for the city's crime and drug problems and homeless crisis".

Amenities

The park offers playing surfaces for several sports, including a

basketball Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly of five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular Basketball court, court, compete with the primary objective of #Shooting, shooting a basketball (ball), basketball (appr ...

court,

roller skating Roller skating is the act of traveling on surfaces with roller skates. It is a recreational activity, a sport, and a form of transportation. Roller rinks and skate parks are built for roller skating, though it also takes place on streets, sid ...

rink and a

soccer Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 players who primarily use their feet to propel the ball around a rectangular field called a pitch. The objective of the game is ...

field. It is also the home of the New York City Bike Polo Club. The park had a service facility which included a public restroom until 1994, when it was closed.

Memorials

In the park, just south of

Stanton Street Stanton Street is a west-to-east street in the New York City borough of Manhattan, in the neighborhood of the Lower East Side. The street begins at the Bowery in the west and runs east to a dead end past Pitt Street, adjacent to Hamilton Fish P ...

, the M’Finda Kalunga Garden honors the memory of an African-American burial ground that was located on nearby Chrystie Street between Rivington and Stanton Streets. A commemorative plaque was installed in 1983. Across Forsyth Street from the park, between Stanton and Rivington Streets, was the "Garden of Eden", a community garden during 1975–1985 created by local activist and environmentalist

Adam Purple Adam Purple (born David Lloyd Wilkie; November 10, 1930 – September 14, 2015) was an activist and urban Edenist or " Guerrilla Gardener" famous in New York City for his "Garden of Eden". His birth name was David Lloyd Wilkie, although he went b ...

Notes

External links

*
Sara D Roosevelt Park information
at the

Website.
History of Sara D Roosevelt Park
at the ''

Forgotten NY Forgotten New York is a website created by Kevin Walsh in 1999, chronicling the unnoticed and unchronicled aspects of New York City such as painted building ads, decades-old castiron lampposts, 18th-century houses, abandoned subway stations, trolley ...

'' Website.
This Manhattan Park Was Once a Gem. Now It’s a ‘No Man’s Land.’
''New York Times'', July 15, 2022 {{Lower East Side Parks in Manhattan Lower East Side Robert Moses projects Chinatown, Manhattan