Flushing Meadows Corona Park

Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, now New York City's second largest park, was once an ash disposal heap in the early 20th century, a landscape F. Scott Fitzgerald evoked in The Great Gatsby. In the 1930s, Parks Commissioner Robert Moses transformed the site into the grounds of the 1939-40 New York World's Fair, hoping fair profits would fund a great public park, but the exposition lost money and the area remained unfinished despite being landscaped as Flushing Meadows Park. Aside from the United Nations' use of the New York City building as the General Assembly chamber from 1946 to 1950, the site stood largely idle until Moses proposed a second exposition there in 1960. 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, and the park was renamed Flushing Meadows-Corona Park. Although that fair also produced no profits, it advanced Moses' vision because some fair buildings remained as park features. By 1968, athletic fields, playgrounds, boat rentals on Meadow Lake, a model airplane field, a bicycle path, and the Queens Zoo had been added. Later developments included Louis Armstrong Stadium becoming the USTA National Tennis Center in 1978, expansions to the Hall of Science and Queens Museum of Art in the 1980s, the rebuilt Queens Zoo opening in 1992, the rebuilding of Queens Theatre in the Park in 1993, refurbishment of the Unisphere in 1994-1995, and completion of Arthur Ashe Stadium for the US Open in 1997.

New York, New York · United States