Collect Pond Park — Attraction in New York

An awesome spot for a picnic on a nice day, especially with Chinatown cheap eats on the other side of Columbus park nearby - check out Tasty Dumpling 3 minutes away. There are metal benches and tables around the edge of the park with a large "pond" in the center. Manage your expectations though - the pond is filled with standing water for only a few months in the summer, starting in late June this year. The park desperately needs to be cleaned and landscaped, and some have called it an "open air homeless shelter," which isn't inaccurate but also isn't a prominent characteristic of this place. I've never had any issues with other parkgoers during the day. Being so close to the Manhattan court system, there are a lot of suits around, but this is a lovely place to spend an hour to relax...

A place that can serve as a time machine for those New Yorkers, visitors and tourists alike---if they will but give it a moment. Few places will have undergone such a transformation over the centuries. Look at the accompanying illustration of the Collect Pond from 1788, with its adjacent hill. Looks more like a fairly large lake, no? The illustration is a mural from inside a nearby building that itself was painted from a painting. Read the interpretive signs and, when time allows seek out the other nearby representations such as the bronze insets in other nearby locations of what the pond and its environs looked like as well as the African...

Its a big place more like for people who work in the courthouses to have lunches. But now it's nice to find somewhere to sit and warm they no longer have water and all nice like they did when they first opened it which is sad, nothing to do for kids unless run around but not a playground. Notice homeless in certain areas of the park. So I have it a 2 star because it's slowly declining since the panadameic and ppl are just coming in and going where before it was totally different full of life. So just a quick place to sit nd eat then leave it is spread out so you don't have to worry about people...