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Henry Hudson Park

Parks in the BronxRobert Moses projectsSpuyten Duyvil, BronxUrban public parks
The statue of Henry Hudson in Henry Hudson Park in Spuyten Duyvil
The statue of Henry Hudson in Henry Hudson Park in Spuyten Duyvil

Henry Hudson Park is a small park in the center of Spuyten Duyvil, Bronx in New York City, located at the intersection of Kappock Street and Independence Avenue. The park contains a small overlook above Spuyten Duyvil Creek, named Half Moon overlook after the ship Hudson sailed into the eponymous river. The park is named after famed English explorer Henry Hudson, who is also the namesake of the nearby Hudson River, Henry Hudson Parkway and Henry Hudson Bridge. In 1906 it was decided to dedicate a monument celebrating the 300th anniversary of Hudson's arrival in what later became Lower New York Bay. The project encountered multiple delays, but in 1909 the city obtained the money, and in 1912 a 100-foot (30 m) Doric column, designed by Walter Cook of Babb, Cook & Welch, was set in place, but shortly after, funds for the project, which had been raised by subscription, ran out. It was revived by Robert Moses in the late 1930s, and by 1938, the area around the monument had been designated as a park and a 16-foot (4.9 m) bronze statue of Henry Hudson, sculpted by Karl Bitter and Karl Gruppe, had been placed atop the column. The park underwent major renovations in 1989 and 1995, mainly due to the efforts of local community activist Paul Cymerman. For his dedication and volunteerism, a small playground area of the park was renamed Paul's Park in 2003, the only New York City park to be named for a living person. After his death in 2004, the local community continued his efforts to keep the park safe and clean.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Henry Hudson Park (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Henry Hudson Park
Kappock Street, New York The Bronx

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Wikipedia: Henry Hudson ParkContinue reading on Wikipedia

Geographical coordinates (GPS)

Latitude Longitude
N 40.880833333333 ° E -73.919722222222 °
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Address

Kappock Street 701
10463 New York, The Bronx
New York, United States
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The statue of Henry Hudson in Henry Hudson Park in Spuyten Duyvil
The statue of Henry Hudson in Henry Hudson Park in Spuyten Duyvil
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December 2013 Spuyten Duyvil derailment
December 2013 Spuyten Duyvil derailment

On the morning of December 1, 2013, a Metro-North Railroad Hudson Line passenger train derailed near the Spuyten Duyvil station in the New York City borough of the Bronx. Four of the 115 passengers were killed and another 61 injured; the accident caused $9 million worth of damage. It was the deadliest train accident within New York City since a 1991 subway derailment in Manhattan, and the first accident in Metro-North's history to result in passenger fatalities. The additional $60 million in legal claims paid out as of 2020 have also made it the costliest accident in Metro-North's history. Early investigations found that the train had gone into the curve where it derailed at almost three times the posted speed limit. The engineer, William Rockefeller, later admitted that before reaching the curve he had gone into a "daze", a sort of highway hypnosis. The leader of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) team investigating said it was likely that the accident would have been prevented had positive train control (PTC) been installed per a prior federal mandate requiring its installation by 2015. Due to a number of other recent accidents involving Metro-North trains and tracks, the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) demanded improved safety measures, which Metro-North began implementing within a week of the accident. In late 2014, almost a year after the accident, the NTSB released its final report on the accident. After reiterating its earlier conclusion that PTC would have prevented the accident entirely, it found the most direct cause was Rockefeller's inattention as the train entered the curve. There were other contributing factors. A medical examination following the accident diagnosed sleep apnea, which had hampered his ability to fully adjust his sleep patterns to the morning shift which he had begun working two weeks earlier. The report faulted both Metro-North for not screening its employees in sensitive positions for sleep disorders, and the FRA for not requiring railroads to do such screening.

1882 Spuyten Duyvil train wreck
1882 Spuyten Duyvil train wreck

On the evening of January 13, 1882, a southbound New York Central passenger train crashed into the rear of another one stopped on the tracks along Spuyten Duyvil Creek in the similarly-named neighborhood of the New York City borough of The Bronx. Eight people were killed, and 19 seriously injured, by the crash and fires afterwards, fires that neighborhood residents and crew extinguished by rolling large snowballs into them until local firefighters arrived. Among the dead was State Senator Webster Wagner, inventor of the sleeping cars used on the train, two of which he was crushed to death between, and a newlywed couple who died together after the bride refused to allow a rescuer to cut her clothing so she could escape. It was the deadliest rail accident in New York City at that time, remaining so for another 20 years.The stopped train was an express from Chicago carrying at least 500, including other state legislators who had boarded at Albany that afternoon to return to their districts in the city for the weekend. While accounts of the accident initially reported that the express was stopped due to a failed brake, it was later revealed that a drunken legislator (never identified) decided to pull the emergency brake. A coroner's jury later blamed the crash primarily on the express train's conductor and rear brakeman. Both were indicted and charged with manslaughter; the brakeman, who testified that he was illiterate and could not read the company rulebook, was later acquitted. The wreck led the railroad to discontinue the use of mineral oil to light cars at night. While the railroad had long before switched from stoves as heat for car interiors to the hot water-based Baker process, that had not yet been perfected and was believed to have contributed to the fires after the crash. Innovations in train heating system design accelerated afterwards.

Fort Cockhill
Fort Cockhill

Fort Cockhill was an 18th-century military fortification located on Cox's Hill or Tubby Hook Hill, now known as the present-day Inwood Hill Park in Manhattan, New York City. A small, circular earthwork structure, in height some ten or twelve feet and equipped with two cannon, it was situated at the northwestern extremity of Tubby Hook Hill, at a point overlooking both the Hudson River and the Harlem River valley.Built by the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War, Fort Cockhill, an outpost of Fort Tryon (which was itself an outpost of Fort Washington to the south), along with a strongly fortified position on Laurel Hill (renamed Fort George after capture by the British), and a four-gun redoubt commanding the Kingsbridge Road, both to the east, provided the rebel defense of the then-sparsely populated northern Manhattan.On the morning of November 16, 1776, during what became known as The Battle of Fort Washington, the fort was attacked and captured by a battalion of Hessian (German) Grenadiers who served in the British Army. In July 1781, George Washington and his generals surveyed the forts of northern Manhattan from nearby points in the Bronx, apparently in preparation to reclaim their captured forts. By that time the fort showed signs of neglect, as reflected in Washington's observation that: “the fort on Cox’s Hill was in bad repair and but little dependence placed on it. There is neither ditch nor friezing, and the northeast corner appears quite easy of access.” This attack never materialized, and the fort was held by the British until the war ended in 1783.