All Parks and Playgrounds in Brooklyn

This park is located just east of Maple Grove Cemetery, a nondenominational burial ground founded in 1875 to ease overcrowding in Jamaica’s Prospect Cemetery. Built in 1668, Prospect was the first cemetery built in the Town of Jamaica, and is located at 159th Street and Beaver Road, just south of the current Long Island Rail Road tracks. On February 9, Read more...

For many years, this site has been called “Farmers Oval” in tribute to the Glendale Farmers Base Ball Club, a semi-professional team that was active from the early 1900’s through the 1950’s. The Glendale Farmers played ball on this site for almost half a century. In 1948 the City of New York acquired the site bounded by Lutheran Cemetery Branch Read more...

John F. Murray (1889-1944) was a lifetime Queens resident and a dedicated recreation supervisor for Queens parks for many years. Although his Parks job kept him busy, he also devoted much of his time to a variety of other activities. Murray supervised the Long Island City Knights of Columbus, the local chapter of the famous Roman Catholic fraternal order. The Read more...

Located on 79th Street between 68th Road and 69th Avenue in west central Queens, this playground takes its name from the surrounding neighborhood of Middle Village. Eliot Avenue, Woodhaven Boulevard, Cooper Avenue, the Long Island Railroad, and the Lutheran Cemetery bound Middle Village. A small portion of the neighborhood, between Woodhaven Boulevard and Richmond Hill, was developed during the 1820s Read more...

This triangle is named after Major James A. McKenna (1885-1918), a native of Long Island City who was killed in the First World War. He attended local schools in Long Island City and Brooklyn and went on to Harvard University as an undergraduate. He completed his education at Fordham Law School. In 1916, McKenna joined the 7th Regiment and fought Read more...

The Weeping Beech tree that once rooted itself in this park lived for 151 years, from 1847 to 1998 — one of the City’s few trees to be landmarked. The tree originated at a nobleman’s estate in Beersal, Belgium from whence it was transported to New York City by the efforts of one enterprising gardener. Samuel Bowne Parsons (1819-1907), a Read more...

This triangle honors the Cuban-born journalist Manuel de Dios Unanue (1943-1992), who was slain because of his vehement and outspoken crusade against drugs. De Dios was born in Camaguey, Cuba, and earned a Master’s Degree in criminology in Puerto Rico before moving to New York City in 1973. He worked with the Hispanic Criminal Justice Task Force until 1977, when Read more...

The history of the Hermon A. MacNeil Park and the history of the College Point neighborhood are closely linked. In 1835 Reverend William Augustus Muhlenberg purchased 134 acres of land in the area as the site of a new Episcopal seminary. Due to the financial Panic of 1837, plans for an expensive stone school building were abandoned. Muhlenberg’s sister, Mrs. Read more...

The long history of this site features colonial settlers, a tasty apple, a beloved children’s poem, subway construction, and a neighborhood playground. In the mid-1600s Captain Samuel Moore was granted eighty acres of land in the area to recognize the efforts of his father, Reverend John Moore (1620-1657), in arranging the purchase of Newtown from local Native Americans. Captain Moore Read more...