Chelsea Park is a park in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, that dates back to 1910. The park has sports fields, basketball and handball courts, a children's playground and space for sitting. The surface is mostly tarmac or artificial turf, with pits for the plane trees and some plots with annual flower plantings. There is a statue to a World War I soldier, the "Doughboy Statue", erected in 1921. The process of approval, funding and clearing the tenements that occupied the site was protracted. The park has since been upgraded several times by the Works Progress Administration and the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation.
Location
Chelsea Park is located between Ninth and Tenth Avenues, and between West 27th and West 28th Streets in Manhattan. The park covers almost . There is fencing around the park to contain the active play areas, with gates at various points. The soccer pitch is surrounded by taller fencing while the rest of the park is surrounded by shorter fences.
The area between West 26th and West 28th Streets and 9th and 10th Avenues is a superblock, comprising two normal-sized blocks. West 27th Drive is a driveway used only for service access, with the park occupying most of the block to the north of the drive. To the south along 26th Street are three 12-to-14-story brick towers run by the New York City Housing Authority in the southern part of the superblock, as well as a public school (PS 33 Chelsea Prep) and the Hudson Guild Settlement House. The annex to the Morgan General Mail Facility occupies the block directly to the north of the park. The Church of the Holy Apostles, built in 1848, is located on the east side of 9th Avenue across from the park. It is located within the Penn South housing complex.
Physical
Infrastructure
Chelsea Park has spaces for both passive and active recreation. It is one of the busier parks in the neighborhood. It contains baseball diamonds, basketball courts and six handball courts. The artificial turf sports field covers about one third of the area. The P.O. David Willis Basketball Court is named after the New York City Police Department officer David Willis (1964–95), who used to patrol the park. There are public washrooms at West 27th Street and 9th Avenue, open year-round. The park contains a District Health Center, a low-rise red brick building in the eastern part of the park.
Ecology
There are no artificial or natural ponds. As of 2008 there were 27 mature London plane trees (Platanus × acerifolia) with heights of around the perimeter of the park, and another 28 similar trees scattered through the interior. Most of the trees are in pits, because most of the ground surface is impermeable. The beds of annual plants around the monument and the health center are the only vegetated and permeable areas of the park other than the tree pits. The northwest section of the park has less vegetation than the southeast section.
The six-story Morgan Mail Building along the northern perimeter is a high-collision site for birds, with collisions peaking in mid May. The first two stories of the building have featureless concrete walls, while the upper four stories are 75% covered with reflective glass panels installed over the concrete wall to give the appearance of windows. A study in the spring and autumn of 2005 and 2006 collected the corpses of many migratory birds that had collided with the windows of the six-story USPS building, deceived by the reflections of the greenery in the park. It seemed that the birds generally had adequate stores of fat (energy), and it was not clear whether they were stopping in Chelsea Park to replenish their energy or as a reaction to the inhospitable and unfamiliar city landscape. About 80% of collisions are fatal, with most collisions occurring during the day. Most are found along the southeast perimeter, where there are most trees, while relatively few are found along the playing field perimeter. This suggests that the reflections of trees in the glass panels are a major factor.
Doughboy Statue
The park is one of nine New York City parks with monuments to local heroes of World War I (1914–18). The Chelsea Park Memorial, also known as the Doughboy Statue, is a granite stele tall fronted by a plinth supporting a bronze statue of an American soldier. ("Doughboy" is a slang term for an infantryman that was widely used in World War I.) The plinth bears the inscription: "To the Soldiers and Sailors of Chelsea World War 1914–1918". The monument is surrounded by cobblestone. It stands in front of the more recently built Health Center.