Pelham Bay Park is a municipal park located in the northeast corner of the New York City borough of the Bronx. It is, at , the largest public park in New York City. The park is more than three times the size of Manhattan's Central Park. The park is operated by the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation (NYC Parks).
Pelham Bay Park contains many geographical features, both natural and man-made. The park includes several peninsulas, including Rodman's Neck, Tallapoosa Point, and the former Hunter and Twin Islands. A lagoon runs through the center of Pelham Bay Park, and Eastchester Bay splits the southwestern corner from the rest of the park. There are also several recreational areas within the park. Orchard Beach runs along Pelham Bay on the park's eastern shore. Two golf courses and various nature trails are located within the park's central section. Other landmarks include the Bartow-Pell Mansion, a city landmark, as well as the Bronx Victory Column & Memorial Grove.
Before its creation, the land comprising the current Pelham Bay Park was part of Anne Hutchinson's short-lived dissident colony. Part of New Netherland, it was destroyed in 1643 by a Siwanoy attack in reprisal for the unrelated massacres carried out under Willem Kieft's direction of the Dutch West India Company's New Amsterdam colony. In 1654 an Englishman named Thomas Pell purchased from the Siwanoy, land which would become known as Pelham Manor after Charles II's 1666 charter. During the American Revolutionary War, the land was part of the "Neutral Ground," a buffer zone between British-held New York City and Patriot-held northern Westchester, serving as the site of the Battle of Pell's Point, where Massachusetts militia hiding behind stone walls (still visible at one of the park's golf courses) stopped a British advance.
The park was created in 1888, under the auspices of the Bronx Parks Department, largely inspired by the vision of John Mullaly, and passed to New York City when the part of the Bronx east of the Bronx River was annexed to the city in 1895. Orchard Beach, one of the city's most popular, was created through the efforts of Robert Moses in the 1930s.
History Pre-colonial times Before the colonization of what is now New York State in the 17th century, Pelham Bay Park comprised an archipelago of islands separated by salt marshes and peninsular beaches. Geologically, most of the park's land first formed during the end of the last ice age, the Wisconsin glaciation, which occurred 10,000 to 15,000 years before the first colonists arrived. The melting of the glaciers caused the formation of the current marshes. Sea level rise from the melting glaciers caused sedimentation along the shore, creating sand and mud flats. Gradually, saltwater cordgrass started to retain sediment, causing some of the inland marshes to flood only during high tide.
The Siwanoy (transliterated as "southern people") were the first Native American tribe to inhabit the Long Island Sound's northern shoreline east to Connecticut. They lived a mostly hunter-gatherer existence. The Siwanoy used the modern-day park site as a ceremonial and burial site, as evidenced by the wampum belts found in the area, which were used for diplomatic purposes among local Native American tribes. Two glacial erratics in the park, deposited during the end of the last ice age, were used ceremonially by the Siwanoy: the "Gray Mare" on Hunter Island, and Mishow near the Theodore Kazimiroff Nature Trail.
17th and 18th centuries
The Dutch West India Company purchased the land in 1639. They called it Vreedelandt, which translates to "land of peace", and alternatively Oostdorp, meaning "east village". Oostdorp became the area known as Westchester Square, to the southwest of the current park.
In 1642, Anne Hutchinson and her family moved from Rhode Island to Split Rock, along the Hutchinson River in what is now Pelham Bay Park. Although the family was English, the land was part of New Netherland under Dutch authority. The exact location of the Hutchinson house is unknown, with one scholar saying that the house was in the modern-day park on the east side of the Hutchinson River, and another saying that the house was on the west side of the river in now Baychester. The Siwanoy destroyed the Hutchinson settlement and killed the family in August 1643, in reprisal for the unrelated massacres carried out under Willem Kieft's direction of the Dutch West India Company's New Amsterdam colony.
In 1654 an Englishman named Thomas Pell purchased from the Siwanoy, comprising the land of the current Pelham Bay Park as well as the nearby town of Pelham, New York, and made his estate on of that land. The current park consists of the southernmost portion of Pell's estate, excluding Hart Island and City Island. Pell's land became known as Pelham Manor after Charles II's 1666 charter, and parts of Pell's land claim were in conflict with that of other nearby settlers. Pell died in 1669, willing his property to his nephew John, who sold off City Island in 1685. The land grant was renewed in 1687. The next year, Jacob Leisler bought of the remaining property on behalf of the Huguenots, and with that land, founded the town of New Rochelle for the Huguenots. Upon John Pell's death in 1700, he willed the property to his son Joseph, who in turn transferred ownership to his own son, John. Ownership of the manor then went to the Bartow family, who were maternal descendants of the Pell family. The Pell family burial plot faced the Pelham Bay waterfront on the eastern side of the manor.
The land was the site of the Battle of Pell's Point during the American Revolutionary War. After the British forces unsuccessfully attempted to trap the main body of the Continental Army on the island of Manhattan, British Army commander-in-chief General Sir William Howe looked for another location along Long Island Sound to disembark his troops. On October 18, 1776, he landed 4,000 men at Pelham, close to the current park. A brigade of 750 men under the command of the American Colonel John Glover were already inland, and they attacked the British advance units from behind a series of stone walls. After a series of attacks, the British broke off, and the Americans retreated.
In 1836, Robert Bartow, a descendant of Thomas Pell, bought of his ancestor's old estate. By 1842, construction was complete on the Bartow-Pell Mansion, the family's manor. Bartow died in 1868, and his family sold the mansion to the city in the 1880s. The mansion was vacant until 1915, when the city and International Garden Club assumed joint maintenance of the building.
1870s and 1880s: Creation In the 1870s, landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted envisioned a greenbelt across the Bronx, consisting of parks and parkways that would align more with existing geography than a grid system similar to the Commissioners' Plan of 1811 in Manhattan. That grid had given rise to Central Park, a park with mostly artificial features within the bounds of the grid. However, in 1877, the city declined to act upon his plan. Around the same time, New York Herald editor John Mullaly pushed for the creation of parks in New York City, particularly lauding the Van Cortlandt and Pell families' properties in the western and eastern Bronx respectively. He formed the New York Park Association in November 1881. There were objections to the system, which would apparently be too far from Manhattan, in addition to precluding development on the site. However, newspapers and prominent lobbyists, who supported such a park system, were able to petition the bill into the New York State Senate, and later, the New York State Assembly (the legislature's lower house). In June 1884, Governor Grover Cleveland signed the New Parks Act into law, authorizing the creation of the park system.
Legal disputes carried on for years. Opponents argued that building a park system would divert funds from more important infrastructure, and that everyone in the city would need to pay taxes to pay for the parks' construction, regardless of whether they lived near the parks. In particular, Pelham Bay Park was located within Westchester County at the time, out of city limits. The city was reluctant to pay to buy the parkland because of the cost and locations. Supporters argued that the parks were for the benefit of all the city's citizens; that the value of properties near the parks would appreciate greatly over time; that the Pelham Bay Park site could easily be converted into a park; and that Pelham Bay Park would soon be annexed to the city. Ultimately, the parks were established, owing to efforts from supporters.
After much litigation, the city acquired the land for the park. Although the residents of Pelham had initially supported the park's creation, they came to oppose it when they found that the park's creation would decrease the town's tax revenue. The 1,700 acres of land for the park were part of the town's area at that time, but could not be taxed, nearly halving the town's tax revenues from land area. One Pelham resident's letter to New York City Mayor Abram Hewitt, asking for financial assistance to supplement the town's growing tax rate, was published in The New York Times in February 1887. A month later, a group of Pelham residents petitioned Hewitt to oppose the park plan. The government of New York City also did not want to pay taxes to the town of Pelham if it bought the land for the park, which had been one of the reasons for its initial opposition to acquiring the land. There was a proposal to have New York City pay taxes to Pelham if it acquired the land, which the city's Tax Department called "entirely novel, and of course, wrong".
Despite Pelham residents' opposition to the park, the city acquired the land for Pelham Bay Park in 1887, and it officially became a park in 1888. Pelham Bay Park became a recreation area under the auspices of the Bronx Parks Department, which bought the land for $2,746,688, . The park used land from multiple estates spread out over an excess of . Some of the old estates' mansions were still standing twenty years later. To alleviate the concerns of Westchester property owners who lost land during the park system's acquisition, the New York City Commissioners of Estimate distributed compensation payments. The Commissioners of Estimate paid a combined $9 million (), but some land owners sued for more compensation in 1889.
1890s to 1920s: Early years
In 1890, Mullaly proposed using the site for the 1893 World's Fair due to its size; however, the fair was eventually awarded to Chicago instead. The Pell family's burial vault was also marked for preservation that year, and in July 1891, the descendants of the Pell family were given permission to maintain and restore the plot. After the park opened, several individuals were allowed to reside in the mansions within the park. In 1892, the New York City Department of Public Parks separately allowed the occupation of the Hunter, Hoyt, and Twin Island houses. The next year, two buildings near Pelham Bridge were auctioned off.
Pelham Bay Park's ownership was passed to New York City when the part of the Bronx east of the Bronx River was annexed to the city in 1895. Despite the park being for public use, some of the old estates remained standing, with a few occupied by private families. Due to its distance from the city, NYC Parks decided to keep of Pelham Bay and Van Cortlandt Parks in their natural state, unlike some of the other parks closer to Manhattan, which were being extensively landscaped. None of the houses were rented in 1899, but by 1900, thirty-six houses in the park were being used as private residences, comprising 75% of houses rented within parks in the Bronx. This number dropped to thirty-three the next year.