Opened July 27, 1939 under Robert Moses as a Depression-era WPA project atop a former industrial landfill, the 1.5-mile park still contains two Aymar Embury II-designed Art Deco field houses recognized for their historic architecture.
The park is mid-overhaul under the East Side Coastal Resiliency project, which closed its northern end while raising the land 8 to 10 feet against flooding, so check current access points like the Delancey Street and Corlears Hook bridges before visiting.
The ground here is manufactured. When Robert Moses laid out the East River Drive in the 1930s the shoreline was pushed out over fill to the bulkhead line, and the leftover strip became parkland, opened on July 27, 1939 with Works Progress Administration labor and money. Five small service buildings by Aymar Embury II went up in 1938; two survive, the Track House and the tennis center comfort station, both recognized by the State Historic Preservation Office as WPA Moderne work of unusual care for utilitarian structures. The amphitheater, built in 1941 and rebuilt with donations after 2001, was demolished in December 2021.
The park has always been severed from the neighborhood that uses it. The FDR Drive runs the full length of the inland boundary, and the only ways across are footbridges at Corlears Hook, Delancey Street and East 10th Street. That is why the 57-acre strip reads as a separate place rather than as the edge of the Lower East Side. It was renamed for Mayor John V. Lindsay in December 2001.
Since 2021 the whole thing has been a levee under construction. East Side Coastal Resiliency, approved in December 2019 and budgeted at roughly 1.45 billion dollars, rejected a floodwall along the FDR in favor of burying the defense inside the park: raise the land about eight to ten feet on new fill, build the river edge as the barrier, and run a continuous 2.4-mile line of berms, walls and swing gates from Montgomery Street up to East 25th Street. Deployable gates on the sewer outfalls close the pipes from below.
That decision cost more than a thousand mature trees and produced years of litigation and protest. Rebuilt sections began reopening in 2024 and 2025 while the remainder stays fenced. What is coming back is a young landscape on high ground, not the shaded one people remember.
New York, NY 10002 · Official site ↗
East River Park, also called John V. Lindsay East River Park, is a 57.5-acre (20 ha) public park located on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. What remains of it is still administered by the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation. Bisected by the Williamsburg Bridge, it stretched along the East River from Montgomery Street up to 12th Street on the east side of the FDR Drive. Its now-demolished amphitheater, built in 1941 just south of Grand Street, had been reconstructed and was often used for public performances. The park included football, baseball, and soccer fields and a running track: Now only the tennis, basketball, and handball courts and some bike paths, including some parts of the East River Greenway remain. Its East River shoreline still makes fishing a popular recreational activity at all hours of the day.
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