Harris Park

Harris Park, also known as Harris Field, is a 15.32-acre athletic complex at Bedford Park Boulevard and Goulden Avenue in the Bedford Park section of the northwest Bronx. It is named for Father John Joseph Harris (1884-1937), an Augustinian priest who worked with young people at St. Nicholas of Tolentine Church; the City Council named the park in his honor in 1940, three years after his death.

The park sits among a cluster of notable Bronx institutions. Lehman College, originally built as the uptown campus of Hunter College in 1932, lies to the south; the Bronx High School of Science, relocated to the area in 1958, lies to the north; and the subway yards of the Jerome Avenue line are nearby.

Harris Park's ballfields, developed by the Works Progress Administration around 1941, are its central feature, hosting baseball, softball, and other field sports. A fieldhouse with locker rooms and showers opened in 1961, and the fields were reconstructed in a renovation completed in 1997.

The park's open fields are expansive enough that in May 2015 the U.S. Marine Corps landed Marine One and other presidential helicopters here when President Obama visited neighboring Lehman College. Bedford Park is a diverse residential neighborhood anchored by these schools and colleges.

Harris Park provides large-scale athletic facilities for the Bedford Park community and the students of the surrounding schools, anchoring organized sports in this corner of the northwest Bronx.