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This playground, located in Queens on the Rockaway peninsula, is named for nearby Almeda Avenue. This area has had a long and interesting history. Originally spotted by Henry Hudson in 1609, the area served as home to a small tribe of Canarsie Indians. The name Rockaway was probably derived from the Delaware or Chippewa Native American language expression for sandy Read more...
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Admiral David Dixon Porter (1813–1891), for whom both the park and the adjacent Public School 94 are named, was born in Chester, Pennsylvania. He followed in his father’s footsteps and joined the United States Navy. During the Civil War, Porter served under Admiral Farragut during the capture of New Orleans. Later, as the commander of the Mississippi River Squadron, he Read more...
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This playground is named for the surrounding neighborhood of Auburndale. The earliest known inhabitants of Auburndale were the Matinecock Native Americans, a tribe of the Algonquin nation. The name Matinecock, meaning “hilly country,” described the surrounding landscape. In 1639, Dutch Governor William Kieft purchased the land that today encompasses Queens County from the Matinecock. The area remained largely agricultural until Read more...
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Sometimes names can form a chain, linking people and places in unusual ways. Remington Vernam (1842-1907) was born in McConnville, New York, and moved to New York City with his family in 1854. He attended public school and went on to law school. He first came to Far Rockaway as a retreat from the stress of his work as a Read more...
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This playground honors Andre Ampere (1775-1836), an accomplished French physicist and mathematician who is considered the father of electromagnetic theory. Ampere Avenue, located near Radio Drive and Ohm Avenue in the Bronx, is also named for Andre Ampere. The streets were given electric names after Issac Leopold Rice, president of the Electric Storage Battery Company, donated the land near Ampere Read more...
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This property honors Alexander C. Grey (d.1933), a veteran Queens newspaper man from Whitestone. Grey suffered a fractured skull and died in Queens Flushing Hospital on March 21, 1933. He was single and 66 years old at the time of his death. He is buried in Flushing Cemetery. A 1940 local law renamed the park to honor Grey, a respected Read more...
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This community garden is named after the neighborhood volunteer group responsible for its conception and final construction in June 2000: Astoria Residents Reclaiming Our World (A.R.R.O.W.). When Sally Sterago founded the organization in 1990, the acronym stood for Astoria Residents Recycling Our Waste. Every two weeks for three years, through funding from Councilman Peter F. Vallone, Queens Borough President Claire Read more...
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This park is named after the surrounding neighborhood of Springfield Gardens which was originally known as “Spring Fields” because of its system of natural ponds and creeks. These resources proved attractive to Dutch settlers, who first arrived in the 1640s. The irrigation system they created was used initially to supply water for crops and later incorporated into the city’s water Read more...
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The story of this unique park demonstrates how a community can organize to reclaim and create a positive public space. Situated at the confluence of the Harlem and East Rivers, the site has a picturesque view of “Hell Gate,” or “Hellegat” as originally named by the Dutch colonists. Throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, this narrow strait between Astoria and Read more...
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Two of Little Bay Park’s boundaries are important thoroughfares in the borough of Queens: Cross Island Parkway and Utopia Parkway. The third boundary is beachfront. Parks acquired the property via condemnation in September 1950. The agency planned to develop the shoreline area but the construction of the Throgs Neck Bridge and the fiscal crisis of the 1970s put an end Read more...
