Piet Oudolf, garden designer
The Saratoga Associates, landscape architect
New York City Parks and Recreation Department and The Battery Conservancy, client

Located on the southern tip of Manhattan, just blocks from the World Trade Center site, The Battery is one of New York’s oldest public open spaces. At the forefront of the post-9/11 renewal of lower Manhattan is the revival of The Battery Bosque, a “park-within-a-park”, for quiet recreation and public art, with unrivaled views of New York Harbor. Key to the redesign is a lighting plan that facilitates park use after dark by commuters, residents and tourists.

Adding a crucial extra level of aesthetic sophistication to the Bosque’s design is subtle illumination conceived by consultant Linnaea Tillett. With only a handful of custom bollards and an array of fountain uplights, she and her colleagues have “cast light up through the water of the fountain, and riffed off the play of harbor lights cascading along the Hudson River,” she says. Technically proficient as it is deceptively simple—the lighting helps to create a “ ‘living-room-style’ rest area of sorts for the local community,” according to project client Warrie Price, director of the Battery Conservancy. “Local citizens with children have never felt safer or more content coming over to this zone at night,” she affirms.

-Architectural Record, February 2007. “Battery Bosque”.

Linnaea Tillett…created bronze “firefly lights” to tuck among the plants, illuminating the grove for evening strolls. –The New York Times