Morgan Professor Tours One of New York’s Last Wild Waterfronts with Nathan Kensinger

As the snows of a prolonged winter melt away, signs of life are slowly returning to one of the East River’s last wild spaces. Along the rocky hills of Hunter’s Point—an overgrown promontory at the mouth of the Newtown Creek—a dense forest will soon become verdant, luring in adventurous Long Island City residents. For many years, dog walkers, high school students, graffiti artists, and Urban Explorers have helped transform this unnatural landscape into an informal parkland, a rare patch of unplanned, undeveloped New York waterfront that has been a source of inspiration to artists for decades. “It’s evocative, it’s very evocative,” said Daniel Campo, author of The Accidental Playground, during a recent visit to the site. “The fact that there are so few of these spaces left really brings out all kinds of emotions.”