Teardrop Park
Tim Carey, president and C.E.O. of the Battery Park City Authority, had the idea several years ago to build a park that gives children a sense of the Catskills. Designed by Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, Teardrop Park features many different kinds of landscapes, including its centerpiece, a 27-foot bluestone wall meant to evoke a mountainside. The wall will develop dripping water on its jagged rock face during the summer, and icicles during the winter. It also has a portal in its center made of limestone for visitors to pass through to the other side.
The two-acre, $17-million park also includes about 40 varieties of trees, shrubs and perennials. The park is located two blocks from the World Trade Center site, on River Terrace between Warren and Murray Streets. The adjacent Solaire, America’s first environmentally advanced residential tower, agreed to reduce the size of the rooftop equipment by six inches, enabling the park’s north lawn to get exactly enough sunlight – four hours – to grow grass that is free of pesticides and insecticides.
Over 1,900 tons of bluestone, granite and limestone was used in the construction of Teardrop, all of it obtained from New York Hudson Valley towns including Alcove, New Paltz, Delhi, and Champlain. In addition, there are over 16,871 plants and trees in the park, 88 percent of which are native to New York State.
Over 50 percent of Teardrop’s materials came from within 500 miles of the site, reducing vehicle pollution, energy consumption and the potential for traffic accidents. The park includes a hill for young children to roll down, a slide into a sandpit and a reading area with rock seats. The reading circle will one day be used by visitors to a public library planned to be built across the street.
