Talk Bronx New York

New York promotes the Bronx’s parks and gardens

Ladies and gentlemen, the Bronx is blooming!

Despite its urban image, the Bronx has 7,000 acres of park land, about 25% of its total area. In addition to Yankee Stadium and the Bronx Zoo, the borough’s green spaces include the New York Botanical Garden; a 19th century garden overlooking the Hudson River called Wave Hill; and Van Cortlandt and Pelham Bay parks, where you can bird-watch, play golf and ride horses.

New York City is touting the Bronx’s green attractions in a new promotion. “Most people don’t think of the Bronx like that. We want to open their eyes to the actual physical beauty of the Bronx,” said George Fertitta, CEO of NYC & Company, the city’s marketing and tourism organization.

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It’s quite a turnaround for a place that once symbolized urban decay. “Ladies and gentlemen, the Bronx is burning,” sportscaster Howard Cosell famously said during a 1977 Yankees game, as footage aired of a building in flames near the stadium. An epidemic of arson plagued the city at the time.

New York is a different place now, billed as America’s safest big city and attracting a record 46 million tourists last year. Many of those tourists are repeat visitors, and “their appetite for something other than Times Square and the Statue of Liberty is enormous,” said Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion Jr., who got an enthusiastic reception talking up the Bronx at a recent tourism conference in Berlin.

Green spaces only comprise part of the Bronx’s attractions. There is also Italian food on Arthur Avenue, a hip-hop music tour, a bed-and-breakfast called Le Refuge Inn, and saltwater swimming at Orchard Beach. For more information, visit the Bronx Tourism Council website at www.ilovethebronx.com or NYC & Company at www.nycvisit.com/bronx. Meanwhile, here are some highlights.

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Dr. Ruth Enters Bronx Walk of Fame Despite Having Never Lived There

She is a world renowned sex therapist. She is a beloved figure across the City and the world. Dr. Ruth Westheimer is many, many things.

But one thing she is not is a native of The Bronx. In fact, Dr. Ruth has never lived in The Bronx.

But that’s not stopping organizers of this week’s Bronx Week celebrations, which are put together by the office of Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion Jr. At a press conference at the University Heights Bridge last week, Carrion announced this year’s inductees to the Bronx Walk of Fame, making a point to note Dr. Ruth’s Bronx bona fides.

“There’s a lot of very interesting people that come from The Bronx,” said Carrion. “One of them is somebody who has become known the world over for talking about a topic that we all really care about.”

Carrion added, mimicking Dr. Ruth’s famous accent, “She is Dr. Ruth Westheimer.”

Dr. Ruth is a well-known and long-time resident of Washington Heights, something Carrion acknowledged during his introduction. But no one had ever before heard that she lived in The Bronx.

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“Learning Landscape” Prototype Constructed at Bronx Public School

On Tuesday, June 10 at 2 p.m., students and teachers at the Adlai Stevenson Campus at 1980 Lafayette Avenue in the Bronx completed a 16′x16′ prototype of a rooftop “learning landscape” planned for their building with materials provided by Pittsburgh Corning and Tremco.

The prototype is the forerunner of a 20,000-square-foot project that will transform the concrete surface of the school’s roof into a living laboratory for hands-on study.

Fundraising for the full-sized landscape is being led by the Stevenson Green Roof Consortium, a group including public and private entities, and is currently reaching its final stages.

Key contributors include Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion Jr. and Council member Annabel Palma. When completed, the landscape will be one of the largest monitored green roofs ever realized in the city and among its most innovative, featuring a structural system designed by Rafael Vinoly Architects’ first annual Research Fellow, Joe Hagerman (2005).

Located in an area in which enrollment and graduation rates are a constant challenge, the Stevenson Learning Landscape is designed as a suite of interactive classrooms for teaching and outdoor experiments in math and science.

The curricula, developed by the Salvadori Center and New Visions for Public Schools with the participation of Stevenson Campus teachers, will be supported by the Federation of American Scientists.

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