Flushing Meadows Corona Park

Flushing Meadows Corona Park, now New York City’s second largest park, was once a 1,255-acre ash disposal heap in the early 20th century, memorably evoked by F. Scott Fitzgerald in The Great Gatsby. In the 1930s, Parks Commissioner Robert Moses began transforming the site into green space by making it the grounds of the 1939-1940 New York World’s Fair, intending to use fair profits to create a great park, but the exposition lost money and left the area unfinished despite landscaping that established Flushing Meadows Park. Apart from the United Nations’ use of the New York City building as its General Assembly chamber from 1946 to 1950, the site then stood largely idle and neglected. In 1960, Moses proposed a second fair there, and plans for the 1964-65 World’s Fair added an ice skating rink, a marina on Flushing Bay, the Hall of Science, the New York State Pavilion, Shea Stadium, and the 120-foot-tall Unisphere, while local law renamed the park Flushing Meadows Corona Park. Although that fair also produced no profits, it advanced Moses’ vision because some fair structures remained as park features. By 1968, the park had gained athletic fields, playgrounds, a boat rental concession on Meadow Lake, a model airplane field, a bicycle path, and the Queens Zoo. In 1978, Louis Armstrong Stadium, formerly the Singer Bowl, became the USTA National Tennis Center. During the 1980s, the Hall of Science and Queens Museum of Art were expanded, and in the 1990s the rebuilt Queens Zoo opened in 1992, the Queens Theatre in the Park was rebuilt in 1993, the Unisphere was refurbished in 1994-1995, and Arthur Ashe Stadium was ready for the US Open in 1997.

New York, New York · United States