Carmansville Park

Amsterdam Av, W 151 St To W 152 St

Manhattan

This text is part of Parks’ Historical Signs Project and can be found posted within the park.

In the July 1868 issue of The Atlantic Monthly, a poet named Charles Dawson Shanly (1811-1875) wrote an article about traveling the road along the Hudson River, in which he described the upper Manhattan countryside: “The road that leads by Washington Heights to New York…is the most picturesque route to the city. Trim hedges of beautiful flowering shrubs border the gravel walks that lead from the road to the villas. Cows of European lineage crop the velvet turf in the glades of the copses. Now and then the river is shut out from view, but only to appear again in scenic vistas.” Another contemporary account called it “the watering hole of the blue-blooded…where social delights were the study and business of summer life.”