Photo of the Day: Late Summer, Morningside Drive, NYC

This past weekend, I met with three great friends from my days at Columbia University for a wonderful afternoon of catching up.

With an incoming class only two weeks from Freshman Orientation (or, as some of us came to think of it, Disorientation), our thoughts drifted back to our experience with that same process 46 years ago, when the school—still dealing with the fallout of the ’68 demonstrations, amid a city still in long-term deterioration—was hardly the most fashionable of the Ivies.

At one point, we recalled, students speaking at one session gave us what sounded like an ironclad tip about survival in the neighborhood: “If the IRT gets diverted from the Broadway and 116^th Street station, do not get off by Morningside Park. Go to the next stop and walk back to Broadway.”

Forewarned meant forearmed about the potential for crime in the area. I made countless trips as a commuting student to the campus, but in the handful of times that the #1 train didn’t make its regular stop, I followed the above advice—and so did other students I knew then.

Fast forward decades later. New York City has stepped back from the fiscal brink, and “Seinfeld” and “Friends” have even made it fun and even hip. Columbia has benefited from this change in the atmosphere, and so has Morningside Drive and Park.

Back in 2006, New York City began a $390,000 renovation project for two ballfields in the park—part of a larger long-term reclamation that also saw new sidewalks from West 116^th Street to West 122^nd Street, an upgraded security booth at 116th Street, bush and growth removal projects along the upper paths, and perimeter lighting upgrades. More improvements have followed since then.

Volunteers associated with The Friends of Morningside Park have done their part, too, with monthly cleanups.

Five years ago, a Barnard student was murdered in the park, briefly reviving fears from decades ago. Even so, a columnist for The Fordham Ram felt confident enough in the surroundings to write last October that the park was “the perfect place to grab a coffee and read a book. You won’t be distracted and will only be inspired by the tranquility of the park.”

This past Sunday, after getting together with my friends, I felt curious enough to venture over to Morningside Drive. It was late in the afternoon and I had to get home, and yes, old concerns about safety still prevented me from walking farther into the park.

But, as you can see from this accompanying photo I took, the vista was pleasant enough to make me think that this stretch was closer to what Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux had in mind when they designed what they hoped would be another urban oasis north of their Central Park in the late 19^th century.