This past Sunday, my friends and I went to Governor’s Island for the 5th Bi-Annual Jazz Lawn Party. We had had a slumber party the night before, so we didn’t have flapper costumes and were all a little sleepy and hungover, but it was a gorgeous, sunny day.
To get to Governor’s Island, you have to take a ferry from Battery Park. It took us a little while to find the ferry.
Once we found the ferry, we boarded with a hoard of people, then quickly went to the back deck, where we found an empty bench.
H took advantage of the short ferry ride to french braid S’s hair:
The ferry had a lot of very well-dressed ’20s-style folk aboard.
Here are what the ferry slips look like from out on the water:
Once we got to Governor’s Island, we disembarked and walked around looking for the lawn party. Governor’s Island is a state-owned park that was a military base forever, back through the Civil War. More recently, it was used as a Coast Guard base, until the mid-90s when the government sold the island to New York State. Since then, there’ve been a number of large-scale art installations,attractions and programs on the island aimed at getting people to take advantage of the free ferry and enjoy the island. Currently, there’s free biking certain days of the week, and rental bikes the rest of the time. There’s a Civil War fort in the middle, and a number of lovely wood-and-brick homes and tree-lined avenues. There are also abandoned facilities – a library, a dental clinic, etc. – from the recent past.
Here are some photos of the houses and lawns:
But we had a party to attend . . .
