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New York|The Manhattan Park That Keeps Children Locked Out
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/31/nyregion/gw-bridge-park-dolphin-park.html
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A beloved park on state-owned land in Upper Manhattan has been closed for years, with neither the government nor any nonprofit groups willing to step in to operate it.
Aug. 31, 2025Updated 12:07 p.m. ET
While a flurry of pedestrians and cyclists stream along a walkway on the George Washington Bridge, time stands still at the tiny park in Upper Manhattan that shares its name.
The slide of a bright yellow and red play set is caked with dirt and surrounded by dried, fallen leaves. Off to the side, a blue dolphin has faded, and the lid on an awkward sandbox warns, “Do Not Stand.” Boat-shaped planters bloom only with unopened bags of Gro-Max soil.
These are the remnants of a neighborhood gem, just out of reach on the western edge of Washington Heights behind wrought-iron gates that haven’t opened for the public in years.
“Nobody didn’t love that park,” said Elizabeth Lorris Ritter, 62, who was chair of the local community board’s parks committee for much of the 2000s and 2010s. “ And a lot of people are wondering, ‘When’s it going to reopen?’”
It was where Cecilia Nucci, 51, watched her children frolic through arcs of water spouting from the dolphin — which gave the playground its nickname, Dolphin Park. Where her children waddled around in diapers under the watchful eye of older children who served as stewards for a modest stipend. And where her now 9-year-old daughter, Marcela, learned to bend the rules in Candy Land.
“I didn’t cheat,” she insisted to her mother and older brother on a recent Sunday morning outside the shuttered park. “I just didn’t want to play the normal Candy Land.”
