Sutton Place Park North

Sutton Place Park North sits at the end of East Fifty-seventh Street, serving as a quiet balcony over the East River. It is one of five small, individual parks that define the eastern edge of this neighborhood, each created in nineteen thirty-eight after the construction of the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Drive cut off direct access to the water. Before this area became a symbol of quiet, exclusive living, it was an industrial margin defined by coal yards and slaughterhouses, and at the turn of the twentieth century, it was the primary territory for a group of street gangs known as the Dead End Kids. Their presence was so notorious that the neighborhood became the setting for the nineteen thirty-five play Dead End, which later inspired several films about the local youth. Today, the park keeps a bronze statue of a wild boar, a copy of the famous Porcellino statue found in Florence, Italy, providing a surreal, classical touch to this former industrial outpost.