The National Parks of New York Harbor Conservancy

OUR MISSION: to create for the people an unrivaled vehicle to preserve the environment, promote economic development and create on New York Harbor, the finest urban waterfront recreation and educational park system in the world.

For more than 400 years, New York Harbor has shaped our heritage. However, the parks and other public spaces that ring the harbor have not been linked together in any meaningful narrative. Though New York Harbor is one of the world's most beautiful and historically important seaports, neither residents nor tourists experience it today as a destination in its own right.

Our goal at the Conservancy is to create that missing narrative -- and the sense of place that goes with it. We are also working on a waterborne transportation plan that will enable people to get out on the water, enjoy the spray, enjoy the surf, and visit each of the harbor's many gems.

Already, we have produced two audio boat tours in collaboration with New York Water Taxi, built a Visitor Center at Federal Hall in Lower Manhattan, and developed this website with a harbor map and visitor information on almost 40 harbor sights. Read about our projects here.

The Arrowhead and the Ranger Hat

The National Park Service Arrowhead is a symbol for the greatest and most-enduring conservation movement the modern world has known. It is a metaphor for the first Americans, who protected the land as they respected the buffalo that gave them the means to sustain their way of life.

The Ranger Hat is a symbol of the public face of the National Park Service.

Rangers who wear this distinctive hat are guides, educators, scientists, field staff, curators, librarians, architects, engineers, and park planners. In surveys, the American public describe rangers with adjectives such as knowledgeable, authoritative.

What we're going to promise as part of this new partnership is to make the arrowhead and the ranger as recognized on the streets of New York as they are on the trails of Yosemite.

Parnership with the National Park Service

The National Parks of New York Harbor Conservancy is a public-private partnership with the National Parks of New York Harbor and sanctioned as its primary partner under a U.S. Department of the Interior General Agreement. With nearly 27,000 acres, the National Park Service is one of the largest caretakers, public or private, on the waterfront, hosting approximately 20 million visitors annually -- four million of whom visit through Lower Manhattan to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island.

To promote harbor tourism, the National Parks of New York Harbor enaged C&G Partners, one of the world's preeminent graphic designers, to create a logo system for all 23 of the Park Service's sites on the harbor. C&G invented a totally new and whimsical alphabet to unite these disparate sites while also revealing their most distinctive traits. The Harbor Conservancy's own logo is part of the family.

Founding

Although numerous city, state and federal parks ring New York Harbor, until now, no organization existed to tie these historic sites and recreation areas into a seamless tapestry. Therefore, the Harbor Conservancy was founded in 2005 by Marian S. Heiskell, David Rockefeller Jr. and Marie Salerno to develop the harbor narrative and spearhead an actionable waterborne transportation plan to connect to the inner harbor with outer harbor destinations.

Harbor District

The Harbor Conservancy is also a founding member of the City of New York's Harbor District Advisory Board, a consortium under Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff of inner harbor parks in support of cooperative initiatives including transportation linkages among federal, state and city parks. The Harbor District consortium has contributed to this website and all Harbor District sites are represented here.