Manhattan’s First Public Beach Is Coming in 2023

Designed by the same firm that created the High Line, the new summer spot has been highly anticipated since project plans were announced in 2019 

Though it’s easy to forget among high-rises and concrete buildings, New York City is full of beaches. There’s the Rockaways in Queens, Coney Island in Brooklyn, Orchard Beach in the Bronx, and Midland Beach in Staten Island—and that’s only to name a few. Though most of the city’s boroughs offer a seaside reprieve during the hot summer months, Manhattan is notably missing from the list. It’s locked between two rivers, but the small island has never had a public beach—until now.

Expected to open in the summer of 2023, Gansevoort Peninsula will be Manhattan’s first public beach. It may not be a coastline in the most traditional sense, but the city is hoping to provide an official location for Manhattanites to relax and sunbathe during the summer months (as it is now, many opt to soak in rays at public parks). “People want a place to lay down and to take their shirt off, and that’s what they’re gonna have here,” Cricket Day, a designer involved in the project told the Daily Beast. However, what they won’t have is a place to swim: Though the plans include a place to launch kayaks, swimming won’t be permitted.

“We’ve been clear from the get-go that this is not a swimming beach,” Noreen Doyle, CEO of the Hudson River Park Trust, told the outlet. “The Hudson River has made a huge amount of progress in terms of its health since the Clean Water Act was passed in the 1970s, but this is not designed as a swimming beach.”

Read the full article on Architectural Digest

Author: Katherine McLaughlin

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