SCENE FROM THE STREET 

Hudson River Park’s Esplanade

Text and photo by Brian J Pape, AIA

Parts of Hudson River Park’s esplanade have passed the 25-year mark and the wooden walkways are currently under reconstruction at Pier 45, having served their useful life. The construction sign promises that all materials possible will be reused. 

The park has revised many of their design guidelines since the first phase of work was done around Christopher Street in the heart of the Village. For instance, the large format granite pavers, which seem to break all too often, are not used for newer parts of the park. Additionally, the boardwalk top boards on Pier 45 were not used for the new Gansevoort Peninsula Park; the new boards are twice as thick as the Pier 45 boards.

What is similar for both esplanades is the substructure of wooden “sleepers” or cross-members that are fastened to the top boards. Those sleepers are secured to the concrete slab base. This allows the rough surfaces to be leveled as the structure is built up. However, despite this effort to make the walkway more capable of supporting trucks and maintenance cranes that travel on the walkways too, something went wrong.

Earlier this year, the brand new esplanade at the southwest corner of Gansevoort Park had a maintenance vehicle run over this area in the photo and bust through this section. The butted joints of the top boards did not have the sleeper boards directly under the joint, thus the heavy load broke the boards. The unfortunate break will have to be rebuilt from the slab up. Stay tuned!