HRPT Moves Ahead with Estuarium Plans for Pier 26
The Hudson River Park Trust (HRPT) is progressing steadily toward its long-term goal of building a permanent home for the Estuarium—a combination laboratory, public exhibit, and learning space designed to offer hands-on programs in the urban ecology of New York Harbor and the larger Hudson River ecosystem. This original facility was created in Tribeca in 1986 by the River Project, a highly regarded, Lower Manhattan-based nonprofit, and expanded on Pier 26 in the 1990s.
The Estuarium was operated as a community facility through 2005, when it was demolished as part of the larger plan by the HRPT to refurbish Pier 26. This move was made amid expectations by community leaders and elected officials that the River Project and the Estuarium would be welcomed back to the pier, once its rebuilding was complete (a milestone that was achieved in 2020).
During the intervening years, HRPT explored partnerships with a number of prospective affiliates, including Clarkson University, the New York Hall of Science, and the historic Hudson River sloop Clearwater. In the end, however, HRPT decided to plan and raise funds for the project on its own.
At the June 18 meeting of the Waterfront, Parks, and Cultural Committee of Community Board 1, HRPT president Noreen Doyle said, “there’s a hole in the park, in Tribeca, which is the planned spot for the Estuarium.” This was a reference to a 7,000-square-foot lot, between Piers 25 and 26 near the Science Playground and the City Winery restaurant.
“It’s intended to be modest in dimensions, but big in aspirations,” she continued. “We have been working for a long time trying to get this project off the ground. We hired a design team. And we have about $20 million thus far committed for this $35-million project.”
Architect Steven Dangermond of the design firm EHDD presented HRPT’s plan for a two-story building that will include exhibition galleries, a classroom, and laboratory space, along with subsurface intakes that draw water and fish directly from the Hudson into the building, where they will be displayed in the glass tanks of a “wet lab.” (At right is an oyster toadfish in an Estuarium wet lab tank, circa 2013.) The building will include resiliency features such as a green roof, low embodied-carbon construction materials (such as mass timber), and all-electric energy.
“This will be something new and exciting, that’s really part of the park and Tribeca rather than a tourist destination or museum or an aquarium in the traditional sense of the word,” said Mr. Dangermond.
The original Estuarium and the River Project were founded by Tribeca resident Cathy Drew (left, in 1996) almost 40 years ago. Her vision and leadership, among other accomplishments, helped pass legislation that made the Hudson River Park an estuarine sanctuary in 1998. This legal designation was based, in part, on fish ecology data that Ms. Drew and her River Project collaborators compiled through research in the Hudson.
For Ms. Drew, the Hudson River has been a lifelong passion. She earned a Bachelor of Science in Molecular Biology from Columbia University in 1979 and a Master of Science in Biological Oceanography from the Marine Sciences Research Center, in Stony Brook, in 1984. From 1973 to 1978, she worked as a scuba diver and underwater photographer on scientific expeditions throughout the southwest Pacific. Settling in Tribeca, Ms. Drew focused her research on the Hudson River, and through the years accumulated a trove of data that continues to inform city, state, and academic environmental programs. When she retired in 2019, the River Project and the Estuarium were both absorbed by HRPT.