Greenacre Park, the secret waterfall of Turtle Bay in Manhattan

At 217 East 51st Street, between Second and Third Avenue, a recess barely wider than a shopfront opens between the facades of Turtle Bay. This is Greenacre Park, a "vest-pocket park" of just 591 square metres: the space of three lots that once held a shop, a garage, and part of a synagogue. Anyone walking along 51st Street passes it easily without noticing, until they hear the water.

The waterfall

The heart of the park is a granite waterfall 25 feet high that plunges to the back of the space. It's not a decorative detail: its steady rush drowns out the noise of Midtown East traffic, and that is exactly the point. To sit on one of the metal chairs, at the little tables set on the descending terraces, is to have the wall of water before your eyes and, in your ears, a sound that erases the car horns. Above, a pergola with infrared lamps keeps the space usable even on cold days. The plants are few and carefully chosen: maples, honey locusts, azaleas, and pansies that change the scene with every season.

A gift

The park is a gift. It was funded by Abby Rockefeller Mauzé, daughter of John D. Rockefeller Jr. and granddaughter of the dynasty's founder, who had it opened in October 1971 and entrusted its care to the Greenacre Foundation, which still owns and maintains it today. It is therefore a private space open to the public, free of charge. The design bears the signature of Hideo Sasaki, at the time the former chair of the Landscape Architecture department at Harvard, who worked as a consultant with the architect Harmon Goldstone. The composition on staggered levels comes from that hand: instead of a flat garden, a sequence of terraces that leads you progressively toward the water.

A neighbourhood park

In February 2018 Greenacre Park was added to the National Register of Historic Places, a recognition that certifies its value as an example of an urban micro public space. Yet it remains above all a neighbourhood park: on average seven hundred people a day use it, mostly those who work or live nearby and come down for their lunch break. For a tourist moving between Grand Central, the United Nations, and MoMA it's a stop that almost no guidebook lists, just minutes on foot from Midtown's great landmarks.

Getting there

To get there, the handiest subway stop is Lexington Avenue/51st Street (6, E, M lines): from there you walk east along 51st Street, past Third Avenue, and the park is on your right. It's best to visit in the shoulder seasons, when you can really sit outside for a good while: spring for the azaleas in bloom, autumn for the locusts turning yellow. It's small, so think of it as a twenty- or thirty-minute pause between one museum and another, not a destination in itself. Bring something to drink or a takeaway lunch: the tables exist for exactly that. The only unwritten rule is the same one all the regulars follow, lower your voice and let the waterfall speak.

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