Teatown Lake Reservation — an Ossining-based nonprofit environmental education center and nature preserve, whose mission is to inspire its community to lifelong environmental stewardship — will break ground on a 22,000-square-foot, $26 million development on Oct. 9. With Manhattan-based Starr Whitehouse as the landscape architect, the development will create an accessible, ecologically enhanced pedestrian campus with reconfigured access and operations. As the focal point of the redevelopment, Teatown will debut a 5,400-square-foot Education Center, designed by Brooklyn’s nARCHITECTS, that will feature teaching and education spaces in its interior and on its exterior deck and green roof.
“For more than 60 years, Teatown has been one of the Hudson Valley’s most cherished community resources and environmental education centers, providing the region with our team’s expert knowledge in land protection and conservation,” Teatown Executive Director Kevin Carter said in a statement. “Visitors can also experience 15 miles of bucolic hiking trails open 365 days a year from dawn to dusk, a two-acre island refuge for more than 230 species of native wildflowers, wildlife exhibits, science and stewardship projects, nature classes and camps and so much more.
“As we look towards the future and inspiring the next generations of environmental stewards, we are thrilled to announce our partnership with nARCHITECTS to create a more accessible and pedestrian-friendly campus and to debut a new Education Center – where students from elementary to graduate school, as well as members of the community, will learn ways to protect our environment and advance conservation.”
Added Eric Bunge, FAIA, co-founding partner, nARCHITECTS: “The people at Teatown Lake Reservation and their exciting mission make for a dream client and project for nARCHITECTS – one that is very much aligned with our convictions. We look forward to leading the transformation of their campus into an immersive, accessible and pedestrian-friendly space that intertwines education with nature and history with future opportunity.”
Inspired by the foliage of Teatown’s more than 1,000 acres, the upcoming education center will create a new amenity resource for the reconfigured campus. Built from Accoya wood, a high-performing, sustainable material, and shaped like a leaf, the one-story center will be wrapped by a ramp to guide visitors from the forest floor to the roof deck, immersing them in Teatown’s natural landscape, while revealing expansive views of the campus, lake and beyond.
The campus will also be anchored by a renovated historic Nature Center, housed in a 15,000-square-foot, 1920s Tudor-style building that served the original estate, once owned by General Electric Chairman Gerard Swope Sr., as stables. The three-story building will accommodate gallery spaces, a nature store, offices and an animal care center that will be the new home to Teatown’s existing animal ambassadors, who are all non-releasable wildlife, including porcupines, rabbits, owls, crows and vultures. In addition to these, the campus will be enhanced with a new pavilion and maintenance building.
Originally founded in 1963 by the Brooklyn Botanic Garden as an outreach station of 194 acres gifted to the garden by Swope’s heirs, Teatown is the largest nonprofit, community-supported nature preserve in Westchester County. Its name dates from 1776, when tea was scarce due to British taxation and a group of women named Daughters of Eve demanded that local merchant John Arthur sell tea at a fair price. Hence, the area became known as “Teatown.”
For more, click here.
