Barcos

The name Barcos refers to the Spanish word for boats, an appropriate title given the neighborhood's deep connection to the East River. While the shoreline today is defined by the rigid concrete of the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Drive, it was once a natural, winding inlet that gave this area its name. Kips Bay was originally a calm harbor where Dutch settler Jacobus Hendrickson Kip established a sprawling farm in the seventeenth century, taking advantage of the sheltered water to cultivate land that stretched toward what is now the heart of Midtown. The bay provided a vital access point for ships, long before the massive towers and medical facilities that characterize the modern landscape took their place.