Video Visit to Governors Island 'Hills,' Opening on July 19
Unique views of the Statue of Liberty are among the attractions of The Hills. Photo: Carl Glassman/Tribeca Trib
Grassy. Outlook. Discovery. Slide. Four hills you’d swear had always been there, rolling gently above meandering paths on the southern end of Governors Island. But as Leslie Koch, president of the Trust for Governors Island, put it: “We’ve created new nature.”
On July 19, the four hills, each distinctly different and rising from 30 to 70 feet, will open to the public. A quarter of their nearly 300,000 cubic yards of landfill is composed of the debris from more than four dozen abandoned buildings and their parking lots, leftovers from the historic island’s long, former life as a military base.
The hills rose out of a pancake-flat landscape and the imagination of the Dutch landscape architect Adriaan Geuze, whose firm West 8 won a 2007 international competition to design the master plan for 87 acres of new parks and public open spaces. (Another large section of the park, which includes Hammock Grove, Liggett Terrace and Play Lawn, opened in 2014.)
“Adrian had the idea that if we had hills, by going up higher in the harbor we would create even more unforgettable views than we already had at the shoreline of Governors Island,” said Koch, who since 2006 has shepherded the island’s radical transformation into a cultural and recreational destination that last year drew nearly 500,000 people.
Outlook Hill was to be 80 feet high, but that turned out to be too expensive, Koch recalled. So how high would be high enough? Koch and Geuze got a lift in a cherry picker above a 40-foot pile of dirt, with a person beneath holding a tape measure stretched between them.
“As we went up each foot we would debate; was that good enough?” Koch recalled. “And we would keep on going. So the reason we’re at 70 feet is because at 70 feet you can see the traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge.”
Indeed, Outlook Hill offers a 360-degree panorama of the city and the harbor and the chance to go eye-to-eye with Lady Liberty. The other man-made land forms include Slide Hill, with what is being billed as the longest slide in the city; Discovery Hill, which offers a nature trail and an up-close look at Rachel Whiteread’s cast concrete sculpture, Cabin; and Grassy Hill, “planted with comfortable grass,” Koch said, “for you to nap on or even roll on.”
“There’s really no bad place from any of the hills,” Koch insisted, “to see spectacular views and experience our city as we never saw it before.”
The Hills at Governors Island will open on Tuesday, July 19 at 9 a.m., with a 10:30 a.m. ribbon cutting. On July 20, for one day only, visitors can watch the sun rise (5:42 a.m.) and set (8:22 p.m.) from The Hills and from the newly reopened Picnic Point. The first ferry leaves from the Battery Maritime Building at 5 a.m. and the last leaves the island at 9 p.m. For more information, go to govisland.com/events.