NYC parks

Naima Green’s photo series “Jewels from the Hinterland,” challenges how black and brown people are viewed in dense urban cities like New York.

NEW YORK—There was a time when a big chunk of Staten Islanders’ quality of life was determined by the direction of the wind.

Inside a fenced-in section of asphalt and uneven brick on the Lower East Side lies a Luther Gulick Playground, which remains well used by the neighboring pre-kindergarteners and families despite the almost desolate surroundings.

Queensbridge Park is set for major reconstruction, the city of Queens councilman, Jimmy Van Bramer announced at a press event Monday morning. “I hated that this park was abandoned,” Van Bramer said. He is going to allocate $6 million to rebuild the park from the ground up.

Ten teenagers from the Highline Green Corps program, as well as park volunteers, are planting trees and plants on the Highline in Chelsea from March 27 to 29.

For New Yorkers constantly on the go, the city’s parks are a place to unwind, exercise, and take in a little bit of nature amid the concrete jungle. But what about making a park your final resting spot?

At the southernmost tip of Roosevelt Island, in the East River, the Franklyn D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park Dedication Ceremony held Wednesday morning was packed with big names in politics.

Recent sexual assaults in Central Park and Hudson River Park have prompted public officials to call for a crackdown on perpetrators.

Free tennis lessons, yoga instruction, and fitness walking sessions will be available in 13 city parks for New Yorkers aged 60-plus, starting Sept. 24. The City Parks Foundation program runs through Nov. 2 and all instruction and equipment is provided free of charge. The sessions are an hour long and each runs twice a week.

Baby giant pandas, rare okapis, and scarlet ibises are some of the animals that are featured on 450 historical postcards—dating from 1903 to the 1980s—that are now available online.

Hilary Salk walked through Bryant Park on her customary Monday morning bird-watching excursion. She raised her binoculars to spot one of the first veery thrushes of the season. If the binoculars didn’t do it, the humming-bird backpack gives her away as a bird lover.