Parks & Recreation Commissioner Cuts Ribbon On Hester Street Playground

Parks & Recreation Commissioner Adrian Benepe today joined City Council Member Margaret Chin, Lower Manhattan Development Corporation (LMDC) Director of Planning and Development Sayar Lonial, Community Board 3 Parks Committee Chair Thomas Yu, Hester Street Collaborative President Annie Frederick, and Cristina Roosevelt, great-great granddaughter of Sara D. Roosevelt, mother of Franklin D. Roosevelt, to cut the ribbon on nearly $5 million in improvements to Hester Street Playground. Students from IS 131 and University Settlement Day Care were also in attendance.

"The renewal of Hester Street Playground is another example of how we are revitalizing the parks in Lower Manhattan, expanding recreational opportunities and making our play spaces better and greener," said Commissioner Benepe. "Thanks to nearly $5 million in funds from the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, former City Council Member Alan Gerson and a New York State grant, the project has transformed a dilapidated 1980s era site into a state-of-the-art playground complete with new restrooms. The design, which added more benches, lighting, drinking fountains and green spaces to the park, would not have been possible without significant input from the community, a textbook example of cooperation led by the Hester Street Collaborative and the SDR Coalition."

"We're very excited to celebrate the reopening of the transformed Hester Street Playground, an important recreational center, especially for the Chinatown and Lower East Side communities," said Lower Manhattan Development Corporation President David Emil. "LMDC is spending more than $280 million to expand and revitalize open spaces Downtown and this park is a fabulous example of how the federal, state and city governments are working together to improve neighborhoods."

The new playground provides a safe, clean and exciting play space for children in Chinatown and the Lower East Side. Designed with considerable input from the community, it includes ADA-compliant play equipment, a spray shower, benches, accessible drinking fountains and lighting. The plaza includes new paving, lighting, seating and tables. Shrubs and mixed plants have been supplemented with new trees and additionAl Green spaces. Mosaic tiles designed by neighborhood youths have been installed in the brick walls as a permanent feature of the playground. New public restrooms in the building will also be completed in August. The project was made possible by a $4.6 million grant from LMDC, funded through Community Development Block Grants from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development; $250,000 was allocated by former Council Member Alan J. Gerson, in addition to a $250,000 grant from the New York State Environmental Protection Fund.

The land that is now Sara D. Roosevelt Park was acquired by the city in 1929 as part of a Robert Moses-era slum clearance initiative. The original plan was to widen Chrystie and Forsyth Streets and build low-income housing. This plan was later changed to set aside this land for "playgrounds and resting places for mothers and children." The construction of the 7.85-acre park in 1934 was the largest park project on the Lower East Side since the acquisition of Tompkins Square Park a century earlier. Parts of four streets were closed (Hester, Broome, Rivington and Stanton) to accommodate seven distinct play areas with separate playgrounds for boys and girls as well as two wading pools, a roller skating rink and a perimeter of benches and shade trees.

The park was named by Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia in 1934 for Sara Delano Roosevelt (1854-1941), President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's mother, as a way of currying favor with the new Roosevelt Administration. She held the distinction of being the only Presidential mother, after Mary Washington, to live to see her son take office.

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