Old Slip Park

Old Slip Park is a small pocket park on Water Street in the Financial District, situated near the former location of Old Slip, one of the many man-made inlets that once punctuated Lower Manhattan's East River waterfront. The park provides a modest green space amid the towering office buildings of the financial district.

The 'slips' of Lower Manhattan were narrow channels cut into the shoreline to allow ships to dock and unload cargo. Old Slip was among the earliest of these commercial waterway features, dating to the colonial era when the East River waterfront was the primary center of New York's maritime commerce.

As Lower Manhattan expanded through landfill, the original slips were gradually buried beneath new streets and buildings. The names survive in the street grid (Old Slip, Coenties Slip, Peck Slip) as ghostly reminders of the vanished waterfront that once defined Lower Manhattan's eastern edge.

The park features limited seating and plantings, serving primarily as a lunch spot for workers in the surrounding office buildings. The First Precinct of the New York City Police Department is housed in a building adjacent to the park, adding a civic presence to the commercial streetscape.

Old Slip Park is characteristic of the small green spaces scattered through the Financial District, each providing a few benches and a patch of green in a neighborhood where building footprints consume nearly every square foot of available land. These micro-parks collectively make the district more humane for its daytime workforce.