If the climb through the park seems long, imagine that you had to swim it. Beside the stairs that rise from Riverdale Ave. are a series of sculpted fish — more than a dozen, perhaps as many as a score, their exact number concealed by soil runoff, leaf litter, and new growth. They appear to be northern pike.
Cast in metal from three slightly varying molds, the fish were added to the park when the 1915 staircase was rebuilt in 2000. According to an NYC Parks official, who recalls that the sculptures were not commissioned but, for reasons of thrift, procured from a supplier of outdoor ornaments and furnishings, they were probably meant to evoke salmon. The siting of the sculptures helps considerably — pointed toward the head of the stairs, relentlessly they swim upstream.
The fish of Ewen Park
Geraldine Lewis for Kenneth Lynch and Sons, date unknown
Beside the stairs that rise from Riverdale Ave. (at 231st St.), Spuyten Duyvil, Bronx
