Basketball
St. Vartan Park is a popular destination for basketball players of all ages, with three outdoor hoops including a full court.
St. Vartan Park’s full basketball court sees action in July 2022
The venue is located between Second Avenue and Tunnel Approach Street from East 35th Street to East 36th Street.
Swish You Were Here
Managed by St. Vartan Park Conservancy affiliate Manhattan East Community Association, Swish You Were Here is a grassroots volunteer program that supplies and installs full nets for public New York City basketball rims with missing or damaged nets. Learn more on the Swish page.
Retrospection
“Kwame Onwuachi . . . who lives in Manhattan’s Murray Hill neighborhood, is perhaps best known for his turn on ‘Top Chef’ in 2015. Since then, he has opened a slew of restaurants . . . ‘Don’t know where the energy comes from. I go to sleep late, at 2 or 3 o’clock. Get up at like 8. I’ll check my emails. Get back to whoever I have to get back to. Usually. Then we’ll play basketball at St. Vartan Park, a few blocks down on 36th Street and First Avenue.”
On July 8, 2022, a heavy downpour failed to stop St. Vartan Park basketball action
“. . . on the corner of 35th Street and Second Avenue . . . pick-up basketball games were played . . . Two older men sat on one of the benches. Joseph Leslie, 80, a World War II veteran, and his best friend, Jerome Goldman, 81, remarked on the talents of one of the young men who had just dunked a basketball . . . The day after terrorists crashed hijacked planes into the World Trade Center, I came on this small park . . . I passed St. Vartan Park and saw the games being played. It was comforting, not disrespectful.”
Basketball action unfolds on the St. Vartan Park courts on April 15, 2001
“Some people think of hoops as a winter sport, but our town has game year-round . Sunny days bring players to St. Vartan Park in midtown.”
Basketball is played in the west section of the park on August 1, 1939 (left) and in the east section on March 2, 1991 | Photography courtesy of MTA Bridges and Tunnels (left) and Newsday (right)
“. . . the Michelob Halfcourt Basketball Championships will be held tomorrow at St. Vartan’s Park . . . The four finalists survived from the 400-team, summering, double-elimination tourney. The men’s New York-New Jersey clash pits the defending champs, the Greg Brown team of Manhattan, against the Darryl Mosley team of Newark, N.J. The women’s championship, a rematch of last year’s finals, will have the defending champion Valerie Walker’s team from Newark going head-to-head with the Audrey Atkins’ team from Queens.”
