2023 NPNH Summer Youth Activities

Interns working on Ellis Island with NPS employees repairing historic windows and window frames. NPS

Summer Youth Programming Between the National Parks of New York Harbor and Stephen T. Building Arts & Craftsmanship High School

The partnership between the National Parks of New York Harbor (NPNH) and the Stephen T. Building Arts & Craftsmanship High School continues to grow and strengthen following the successful conclusion of our summer 2023 youth programming.

Through the NYC Summer Youth Employment Program (SYEP), operated by the city of the New York, thirty-six Mather students and recent graduates were paid to work on historic preservation projects at eleven different park sites during July and August. The projects ranged from landscape management, historic stair & porch restoration, varnish inpainting, gravestone restoration, window and window frame replacement, stone carving, fencing restoration, and log carpentry work. Students were divided up into smaller work crews and would then rotate through the work sites to work on a variety of different projects. Through their varied work, students were able to practice skills that they had learned in the classroom at Mather further developing and refining their technical abilities.

Along with the participants of SYEP, six students were hosted through the Student Conservation Association. This crew worked at Morristown National Historical Park, assisting the park site in restoring their revolutionary war solider huts. As part of this ongoing restoration project students undertook an array of tasks, using tools such as pickaxes, crowbars, sledgehammers, crosscut saws, and log splitters. As part of Mather’s ongoing involvement with the solider hut restoration project, current students will continue to physically restore a hut structure in their classroom space out on Governors' Island, before returning to Morristown to continue with on-site work later this school year.

As part of our youth programming NPNH continues to support camping-based work and recreation trips. On these excursions students simultaneously complete or assist with historic preservation projects while camping and recreating at a national park site. Over the course of the summer student crews camped and worked on projects at Yellowstone National Park, Grand Tetons National Park, Saratoga National Historical Park, and Weir Farm National Historical Park. In total thirty students participated in various camping crews, and for sixteen of those students it was their very first time going camping.

Throughout the summer these students not only gained valuable hands-on work experience, but they were exposed to over forty different occupations and met with over fifty-five National Park Service staff members for career exploration activities. Students have since returned to school with a better appreciation for the skills they are learning, and a deeper understanding of what a potential future with the National Park Service could hold.

To share more information about our summer activities the National Parks of New York Harbor has created a graphic report which dives into greater detail about each individual project. The full report can be viewed here.

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