One moment
Forests
Ridgewood Reservoir
A green pocket the city kept · New York, United States
4.6★Rating
223Reviews
$Price level
Year-round; go in spring or autumn migration, and winter for the owlsBest time
The experience
A decommissioned 50-acre reservoir inside Highland Park, built to water the independent City of Brooklyn — its third basin finished in 1891. It was demoted to backup supply in 1959, last drawn on during a 1960s drought, taken out of service in 1989 and handed to the Parks Department in 2004. Left alone for decades, the basins grew into woodland and freshwater wetland now holding 156 recorded bird species and 175 plant species, including short-eared owl and pied-billed grebe. A path circles the entire rim as part of the 40-mile Brooklyn–Queens Greenway.
Three abandoned Victorian water basins that a forest quietly moved into, thirty feet below your feet.
abandoned infrastructurereclaimed by treesrim walkbirders only
Where it is
New York, United States · Highland Park, Cypress Hills, on the Queens–Brooklyn line. Coordinates from the listing we sourced it from.
DirectionsWhat a membership adds.
Everything above is free: the name, the photo, the rating, the exact spot. What members get is the part you can't Google: the sourced insider tip for this place (what to order, when to go, what to skip), every day of your trips unlocked in full with the insider tip on every researched stop, and the concierge at full strength, answering with your own insider tips, no daily meter.
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