Saint Mary's Park

Story

St. Mary's Park is a park in the Mott Haven neighborhood in the southwest of the Bronx borough of New York City, in the United States. The park has sporting facilities and an indoor recreation center.HistoryOriginally part of the estate of Jonas Bronck (1600-1643), for whom the Bronx is named, it was occupied by a group of Loyalist military refugees during the Revolutionary War, as a camp. Years later the land was held by the family of Gouverneur Morris (1752-1816), one of the authors of the U.S. Constitution. After 1857 the area was known as “Janes’ Hill” for owner Adrian Janes of Janes, Kirtland and Company Iron Works, a local foundry that manufactured bridges for Central Park, railings for the Brooklyn Bridge, and the 8,909,200-pound dome of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C.During the mid-19th Century, a segment of the Spuyten Duyvil and Port Morris Railroad (est. 1842) was built through the land. The line was acquired by the New York and Harlem Railroad in 1853, which itself was acquired by the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad in 1864, and transformed it into a freight branch.In 1874 New York City annexed parts of the southern Bronx from Westchester County. Seeking to create public parks in the Bronx, journalist John Mullaly (1835-1915) founded the New York Park Association in 1881. His efforts culminated in the 1884 New Parks Act and the city’s 1888-90 purchase of lands for St. Mary’s, and several other large parks throughout the borough, including three parkways. St. Mary’s Park was named for a Protestant Episcopal church that stood three blocks to the west until 1959.