Public Employee Press

Part 1 in a series

Greening of New York
Harlem River Habitat

By JANE LaTOUR

“DC 37 Landscape Architects and Engineers completed two remarkable, first-of-their-kind projects last year, side by side on the Harlem River. Replacing rusted and collapsing steel sheeting with porous edges is helping to keep the river water clean, restore floodplain functions and improve near-shore habitat. Having this living urban edge prototype visible from two bridges, as well as accessible by land and water, is expected to inspire and influence how New York treats future waterfronts.”

—Marcha Johnson
Landscape Architect

Local 375 members have transformed a rubble-strewn stretch along the Harlem River into a beautiful expanse of urban parkland and shoreline that will serve as a model for future projects.

To create the new quarter-mile segment of the Harlem River Park and Esplanade, they reconstructed over 1,200 feet of failing shoreline and replaced a 535-foot section of corroding steel sheet bulkhead with a porous rock structure and ecologically productive salt marshes and tidal pools.

The new water’s edge is built of gabions, rock-filled baskets that protect the land from being washed away using technology that dates back to ancient Egypt.

“In order to build the gabion system, we had to seal the area and pump the water out 20 feet below sea level,” said Walid Abdelaziz, the Associate Project Manager for the construction phase. “It was a challenge. It makes me very proud as a civil servant to complete such a beautiful project, one New Yorkers can enjoy every day.”

Landscape Architect Marcha Johnson, a 20-year Parks Dept. veteran, “provided invaluable research and design assistance. She inspired many of the most pioneering ideas,” said Senior Landscape Architect Ricardo Hinkle. Johnson’s work was partially funded under a state “Designing the Edge” grant.

The gabion seawall is reinforced and built of marine-grade stainless steel baskets filled with rocks. “The rocks and even the steel mesh provide innumerable pores and surfaces, an ideal habitat for a wide range of marine organisms,” said Hinkle. “This encourages a healthier and more diverse underwater food chain, and many of these organisms actually clean the river.”

The salt marsh plantings set back from the shore will attract even more living creatures. “I have already observed clusters of ducks in the salt marshes, which one would never see along the sterile steel,” he said. The tide pools will attract yet more and different marine creatures, within the safe confines of the park, so that schoolchildren and the general public can examine and monitor what types of organisms appear over time.

“The reconstruction provided an opportunity to enhance the structure of the shoreline and invite the public to come down to the water’s edge,” he added, where a set of elegant granite seats and smaller steps lead down to low tide level.