Youth is served with schools and a place of its own

1972

At home in the dome

The two stories that dominated the year both involved teens and construction, but they couldn’t have been more different.

Efforts to create a public high school to serve Riverdale and Kingsbridge go back to 1966, when the precursor to Community Board 8 endorsed a proposal for an educational park on the site of a defunct rail yard between the Harlem River and West 230th Street.

The first school on the site was to be John F. Kennedy High School, but nothing about its planning or development came easily. Parents demanded that the school serve Riverdale and Kingsbridge, but the Board of Education hoped to offer space to students from a much broader area. Eventually, a compromise was struck, giving students from northern Manhattan, as well as the northwest Bronx, access to the school. A lack of buses and teachers contributed their own problems

At last, JFK’s September opening went off without a hitch despite an initial population that was about 10 percent larger than the planned-for 1,600 students.

By contrast, Riverdale Neighborhood House’s Seton Park Dome Project seemed to be accomplished instantaneously. It was the brainchild of youth worker Pyser Edelsack. He was enamored of geodesic domes as a counterculture symbol and he was betting that the opportunity to build one would lure teenagers away from their hangouts on Johnson Avenue and the Monument.

Mr. Edelsack and Richard Stein — a just-graduated architecture student who later became the publisher of The Riverdale Press — convinced the board of RNH that the teens could build a dome themselves at minimal cost that could house a wide variety of teen activities.

Despite miles of red tape and concerns the dome would become a hangout for drug-addled teens, it finally opened to great fanfare. An attendee at the opening ceremony wryly remarked that the it had taken less time than the long-awaited park — still unfinished at the time — in which it stood.

Ironically, by the time Seton Park opened in 1976 the dome had run its course. Parks Department restrictions on its use, budget restrictions and management changes at Riverdale Neighborhood House made it untenable. By 1977 it was demolished.