
Photo courtesy of Ian Douglas/Waterfront Alliance.
Photo courtesy of Ian Douglas/Waterfront Alliance.
The city's urban dwellers interacting with the shoreline at the Hoboken Cove Community Boathouse during Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance's City of Water Day 2014.
Throughout the 1990s, the RBF New York City program supported neighborhood-based projects restoring, preserving, and caring for physical environments, creating a positively changed urban landscape, and encouraging civic engagement as a means of improving quality of life in resource-strapped neighborhoods and underutilized waterfront areas. Grants included the Fund for the City of New York for streetscape improvement projects in Harlem and upper Manhattan; the New York Restoration Project to develop an integrated plan for the Harlem River Corridor and surrounding parks; the Open Space Institute to advocate for the construction of Hudson River Park; and the Brooklyn Bridge Park Coalition to develop a community-based plan for the downtown Brooklyn waterfront. In 1998, the Fund supported a region-wide initiative to improve the nearly 600 miles of New York-New Jersey waterfront and the possibilities for restoration, redevelopment, and public access. In addition to supporting these on-the-ground projects, the Fund was instrumental in creating the Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance, which continues to provide important research and advocacy region-wide.
Browse the major events in the Rockefeller Brothers Fund's history