Peter Jay Sharpe Children's Glade: Great Hill Children's Glade

West Harlem / Hamilton Heights / Sugar Hill

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The Children's Glade at the Great Hill is a series of small lawns cut out of the woodland edge and connected by numerous winding rustic pathways. Strategically placed boulders provide some seating in this open-air auditorium.

Conservancy landscapers designed the Glade to be a "clearing in the forest," where families can gather for music, dance, and theater workshops, geared toward children ages 4 to 13.

The Children's Glade landscape and its ongoing maintenance and care were made possible by the Peter Jay Sharp Foundation and its trustees.

The Great Hill is an open hilltop meadow with picnic tables, a three-quarter mile soft surface oval path (good for a jog), and green grass under stately American elms. Olmsted and Vaux designed the Great Hill as a carriage concourse where passengers could enjoy commanding views of the Hudson River and the Palisades.

But with the passing of time, and the growing of trees, the view slowly disappeared. In the 1940s and 1950s, the Great Hill was turned into a recreation area with bocce, tennis and volleyball courts, and horseshoe pits. By the 1980s, it was an abandoned and dilapidated ruin. The restoration of the landscape in 1993 as a place for community leisure finally gave the Great Hill the contemporary identity it needed. It now is the site of family and church picnics, frisbee games, running or race walking on the oval track

Parks & Outdoors West Harlem / Hamilton Heights / Sugar Hill