ABOUT FCHP

Friends of City Hall Park purposes

FCHP is a volunteer community organization formed in 1995 to:

  1. assist NYC Parks to make the best possible City Hall Park (CHP) as a precious neighborhood park & all New Yorkers’ city commons.

  2. assure public access to all agreed paths & lawns.

  3. facilitate volunteer events and projects, including the residents and organizational group volunteer gardening & bi-annual It’s My Park! Celebrations.

  4. join with open spaces organizations city-wide, including to increase NYC Park’s budget as an essential multi-faceted service democratically accessible for all.

  5. keep our civic center civic: assure that CHP will remain forever the domain of NYC’s government, with NYC Parks’ overall management of CHP, NYC funding CHP’s basic adequate maintenance, with all baseline NYC Parks & other NYC Departments CHP employees, and with private funds limited to planting projects, specific capital improvements, & events in CHP approved by NYC Parks, including signage with no logos, QR codes, or websites within CHP borders.

Organizational context: City Hall is a building in a public park. 

City Hall Park is 

• our precious 6-acre neighborhood park in one of NYC’s fastest growing communities. In the center of Manhattan island, many blocks from the riverfront parks, CHP is most residents’ only backyard, in which to play & enjoy nature;

• a free, safe place for neighborhood residents, workers & business owners, visitors from all over the world & passers-by, to take a deep breath, socialize & unstress, especially needed during the pandemic’s stress & isolation;

• a center of Lenape homeland, for thousands of years and currently;

• all New Yorkers’ city commons, with many historical references, including as the birthplace of our city’s & nation’s democracy;  

• NYC’s civic center of our municipal government, for our Mayor, City Council, other elected officials & visiting dignitaries plus as a site for first amendment expression;

• symbolic optics for the condition of our NYC executive & legislative branches of government, including as a daily location for local & national media coverage;

• a pedestrian crossroads for tens of thousands every week, making the park’s paths among the most heavily-used in NYC;

• an al fresco art gallery, with exemplary permanent monuments & installations, as well as regular temporary Public Art Fund exhibitions;

• an urban botanical garden;

• the domain of at least ten NYC agencies with overlapping responsibilities.

Lobbying: FCHP works with our excellent local elected officials to gain support for proper care & maintenance of CHP as well as all NYC parks.