Harlem Meer

The Park's co-designers, Olmsted and Vaux, called this man-made water body "the Meer" (a Dutch word meaning "lake"), in recognition of the former swampland that was a part of Harlem, the 17th-century community established in this area by New York's first European immigrants.

In the 1660s, the British governors constructed the Kingsbridge Road, an east side highway that linked the growing port at the southern tip of Manhattan Island to Harlem and the British colonies to the north. The road crossed over the swamp by a series of low-lying bridges and passed through the only narrow break in the wall of steep rocky cliffs that line the southern shore of the Meer today. That opening became known as McGown's Pass, a site that played a significant role in the American Revolution. When British ships attacked the indefensible New York colony in September 1776, the British army marched up the Kingsbridge Road to McGown's Pass and captured the fortification that was placed at the pass. For the next seven years, British and Hessian troops occupied this strategically important area until their defeat in the Battle of Yorktown in 1783.