PARK FACT:

In the 1930s, New York City Parks Commissioner Robert Moses planned a beach, bathhouse, and cafeteria complex with a bus terminal and parking field at Ferry Point Park. Unfortunately, the plan was never implemented.

Ferry Point Park

Westchester Creek, Schley, Emerson Avenues, East River

Bronx

Acres: 413.80

If you’re looking for spectacular views, take a stroll in this expansive Bronx park. With one and a half miles of prime waterfront, Ferry Point Park offers unparalleled views of the East River, the Manhattan skyline, and of the Whitestone and Throgs Neck Bridges. If a great outlook isn’t enough, how about some sports? Ferry Point Park offers visitors vast playing fields for cricket, soccer and football. On the east side, you can find a basketball court to practice shooting hoops. Lucky for golf lovers, the park recently announced its plan to build a public world-class 18-hole golf course.

In addition to the state-of-the-art golf course, Ferry Point Park will include two community parks, expected to be completed in the Summer of 2009. These parks will include a little league and a junior baseball field, basketball courts, a play area for children and a pedestrian trail. A separate 20-acre waterfront promenade will convert undeveloped parkland into a waterfront park with views of the Long Island Sound, paths with seating and access to the water.

Get excited to spend long afternoons playing in the growing Ferry Point Park. With its expanding facilities, the park will truly be an asset to the Ferry Point Park community and citizens across New York City.

With a dramatic vista of the East River and Westchester Creek, this large park is approximately half the size of Central Park. Though Ferry Point Park has grown in area by landfill, the original parcel of 171 acres first came under Parks jurisdiction in 1937. It was purchased by the city from the Roman Catholic House of the Good Shepherd in proceedings for acquiring land for the Bronx-Whitestone Bridge. The parcel was called Old Ferry and was located at the confluence of Westchester Creek and the Baxter Creek Inlet (later filled).

The land on which Ferry Point Park was built was part of the Throgmorton Grant of 1642, and it was farmed by a series of families through the next two centuries. In 1850 the land was purchased by shipping magnate Augustus diZerega and the tobacco manufacturer Jacob Lorillard. It was then sold to the Catholic House of the Good Shepherd in 1916. The park was named for the ferries that traveled between the Bronx and Queens, from Westchester Village to Whitestone and from Clason Point to College Point. At least two operators, the Twin City Ferry Company and the City of New York, administered ferries along the latter route from 1910 to 1939.

With the construction of bridges and tunnels linking the city's many islands and mainland, the ferries were put out of operation. When the Bronx-Whitestone Bridge was opened in 1939, ferry service between Clason Point and College Point ferry was discontinued. With many acres to develop and numerous shade-giving European Beech trees outlining the parkland, the site of Ferry Point Park has great potential. In the 1930s New York City Parks Commissioner Robert Moses planned a beach, bathhouse, and cafeteria complex with a bus terminal and parking field here. Unfortunately, the plan was never implemented. In 1948 two park additions totaling 243 acres were acquired by condemnation. Sanitation filling began in 1952, and continued for the following eighteen years.