East 51st Street, then the vest pocket park between two buildings: honey locusts, movable chairs, the raised west terrace under its trellis and acrylic domes, the runnel under the rough east wall, and the 25 foot waterfall filling the back, the works hung on the walls.
Greenacre Park sits at 217 East 51st Street between Second and Third Avenues. Abby Rockefeller Mauze, inspired by Paley Park and the shortage of green space in Midtown, set up the Greenacre Foundation in 1968 to build it. The park officially opened on October 14, 1971. It was designed as an intimate room where the surrounding buildings act as walls and a canopy of leaves as the ceiling, with a waterfall at the back.
Source · Greenacre Park ↗
The 1971 park by Sasaki, Dawson, DeMay, roughly sixty feet by one hundred twenty, a higher terrace along the west side under trellising, acrylic domes and heaters, honey locusts, a runnel along the ashlar east wall, and the 25 foot cascade across the back. Mood: lunch hour under the water. Everything is procedural geometry with painted surfaces; nothing is a scan or a photograph. The room is an interpretation, and it hangs the New Yorkers the census recorded at this place first.