Alley Pond Park

Alley Pond Park
Alley Pond Environmental Center (APEC)
Type	public park
Location	Bordering Douglaston and Bayside in New York City
Coordinates	40°45′30″N 73°44′50″W / 40.75833°N 73.74722°W / 40.75833; -73.74722Coordinates: 40°45′30″N 73°44′50″W / 40.75833°N 73.74722°W / 40.75833; -73.74722
Area	655.294 acres (265.188 ha)
Operated by	New York City Department of Parks and Recreation
Status	Operating
Parking	200 spaces

Alley Pond Park is the second-largest public park in Queens, New York City. It occupies 655.294 acres (265.188 ha), most of it acquired and cleared by the city in 1929, as authorized by a resolution of the New York City Board of Estimate in 1927.^[1] The park is bordered to the east by Douglaston, to the west by Bayside, to the north by Little Neck Bay, and to the south by Union Turnpike. It is run and operated by the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation.

The park contains the Queens Giant, an old tulip poplar (Liriodendron tulipifera) that is the tallest carefully measured tree in New York City and probably the oldest living thing in the New York metropolitan area.^[2]

Cross Island Parkway transects the park from north to south, while the Long Island Expressway and Grand Central Parkway transect the park from east to west. South of the Long Island Expressway, there are woodlands, and north of it, there are meadowlands.

The Alley Pond Environmental Center, with a library, museum and animal exhibits, is located in the northern part of the park, on the south side of Northern Boulevard.

Geography

Creek, shown here at high tide, flows into Little Neck Bay, bridged by the Long Island Rail Road Port Washington Branch

The park occupies part of a terminal moraine, a ridge of sand and rock, that was formed by a glacier 15,000 years ago, at the southern terminus of the Laurentide ice sheet. Boulders dropped by the glaciers on the hillsides of the southern end of the park still remain, as do scattered kettle ponds formed by melting ice. The valley features both fresh water, draining into the valley from the hills and bubbling up from natural springs, and salt water from Little Neck Bay; this promotes ecodiversity, with freshwater and saltwater wetlands, tidal flats, meadows, and forests accommodating abundant bird life.^[3]

History

What is now Alley Pond Park was once home to the Matinecock, who harvested shellfish from Little Neck Bay. The English began to colonize the area by the 1630s, when Charles I granted Thomas Foster 600 acres (240 ha), on which he built a stone cottage near what is now Northern Boulevard. Mills were built on Alley Creek by Englishmen Thomas Hicks and James Hedges, while other colonists used the valley as a route to Brooklyn, the Hempstead Plains and the Manhattan ferries. George Washington (1732–1799) is thought to have used this route for his 1790 tour of Long Island. The valley's usage as a passage, or perhaps its shape, may ultimately account for its name; in any case, an 18th-century commercial and manufacturing center there became known as "the Alley".^[3]

Despite this center and light industrial uses that dated back to Hicks' and Hedges' mills, the area remained agricultural and largely unspoiled into the 20th century. In 1908, as motorists sought attractive areas for expeditions, William Kissam Vanderbilt built his privately run Long Island Motor Parkway through the area in 1908. By the 1920s, automobiles were proliferating faster—and so were people, as the population of Queens doubled during that decade. With open space becoming less plentiful, the City of New York began setting aside land for parks, and it acquired the Alley site for this purpose on June 24, 1929. Later that year, the Parks department expanded the park into 330 newly acquired acres surrounding the alley and removed some older structures. After this acquisition had been approved, Mayor James J. Walker (1881–1946) declared that "there is no better site in Queens".^[3]

In 1935, the park officially opened with ceremony attended by Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia (1882–1947) and Parks Commissioner Robert Moses. Already, the park boasted 26 acres (11 ha) of new playing fields; the Alley Pond Park Nature Trail, which was the city's first of its kind; a 23-acre (9.3 ha) bird sanctuary; bridle paths; tennis court; picnic areas; and a 200-space parking lot.^[3]

The Parks Department added a 2.5 miles (4.0 km) bicycle path in 1937, having acquired and converted Vanderbilt's parkway. It runs west into Cunningham Park as part of the 40 miles (64 km) Brooklyn-Queens Greenway from Bayside to Prospect Park and Coney Island.^[3]

Since the 1930s, the Parks Department acted with more "zeal" for recreation than for conservation, which was the other purpose of parks.^[3] The Department filled in much of the Valley's marsh lands to construct recreational facilities and roads, namely, the Long Island Expressway and Cross Island Parkway. By 1974, the Department and City had begun to make the environment a higher priority, creating the Wetlands Reclamation Project to rehabilitate the park's natural wetlands. In 1976, the Alley Pond Environmental Center opened with a mission of educational and ecological education. For conservation purposes, the City acquired over US$10.9 million worth of new land for the park, and in 1993, almost $1 million was spent to restore the Picnic Grove, renovate two stone buildings, and reconstruct the playground and soccer field.^[1]

Queens Giant

The "Queens Giant" measures 133.8 feet (40.8 m) tall and is probably the oldest living thing in the New York metropolitan area.

The sign posted at the site of the Queens Giant

The Queens Giant (also known as the Alley Pond Giant or Alley Pond Park Giant), at 40°45′12″N 73°44′49″W / 40.75320°N 73.74708°W / 40.75320; -73.74708, is an old tulip poplar (Liriodendron tulipifera) that is located in Alley Pond Park, being the tallest carefully measured tree in New York City, and it might also be the oldest living thing in the New York metropolitan area.^[2] As of 2005, the tree measured 133.8 feet (40.8 m) tall and is probably 350-400 (and possibly as many as 450) years old.^[4]

The Queens Giant is hidden within a grove, barely visible from westbound Interstate 495. The tree is near the Douglaston Plaza Mall, and is accessible by foot from Alley Pond Park. There are no signs to it, but it can be viewed in an Urban Park Ranger tour.^[4] The Queens Giant is surrounded by a metal fence on all sides to protect it, and a hill and a sign describing the tree stand in front of it.^[4]

A tree in Staten Island, known as the Clove Lake Colossus, has rivaled the Queens Giant for a long time. The Clove Lake Colossus has a more massive trunk, but it is only 119 feet (36 m) tall.^[2]

References

1 2 Alley Pond Park, NYC Parks. Retrieved September 8, 2007.
1 2 3 Michael Crewdson and Margaret Mittelbach (November 10, 2000). "A Rendezvous With 2 Giants". The New York Times. Retrieved 20 July 2012.
1 2 3 4 5 6 Alley Pond Park History, NYC Parks. Retrieved August 2, 2014.
1 2 3 Corey Kilgannon (March 27, 2004). "In Obscurity, The Tallest And Oldest New Yorker". The New York Times. Retrieved 20 July 2012.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Alley Pond Park.

Queens Giant:

Protected areas of New York City

Federal

National Historic Sites	Lower East Side Tenement Museum Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace
National Monuments and Memorials	African Burial Ground Castle Clinton Federal Hall General Grant Governors Island Hamilton Grange Statue of Liberty Stonewall
Other Protected Areas	Gateway National Recreation Area Floyd Bennett Field Fort Tilden Fort Wadsworth Great Kills Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge Jacob Riis Miller Field

State

State Parks	Bayswater Point Clay Pit Ponds East River Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Gantry Plaza Riverbank Roberto Clemente

City parks and preserves

Manhattan	79th Street Boat Basin Abingdon Square Albert Capsouto Asphalt Green Battery Bennett British Garden at Hanover Square Bowling Green Bryant Captain Patrick J. Brown Walk Carl Schurz Central Park Chelsea City Hall Collect Columbus Corlears Hook Dag Hammarskjold Plaza Damrosch Dante DeSalvio Playground DeWitt Clinton Drumgoole Plaza Duane East River Greenway East River Esplanade East River Park Stuyvesant Cove Finn Square Foley Square Fort Tryon Fort Washington Gorman Gramercy Greenacre Park Hamilton Fish Hanover Square Harlem River Hell's Kitchen Herald Square High Line Highbridge Holcombe Rucker Hudson Hudson River Imagination Playground at Burling Slip Inwood Hill Isham J. Hood Wright Jackie Robinson Jackson Square John Jay Liberty Louis Cuvillier Madison Square Manhattan Waterfront Greenway Marcus Garvey Mill Rock Mitchell Square Morningside Murphy's Brother's Playground Muscota Marsh Paley Peretz Square Peter Cooper Plaza Lafayette Queen Elizabeth II September 11th Garden Ralph Bunche Randalls Island Richard Tucker Square Riverside Robert Moses Playground Roosevelt Triangle Rucker Sakura Samuel N. Bennerson 2nd Playground Sara Delano Roosevelt Septuagesimo Uno Seward Sheridan Square Sherman Square St. John's St. Nicholas St. Vartan Straus Stuyvesant Square Swindler Cove Teardrop Theodore Roosevelt Thomas Jefferson Thomas Paine Tompkins Square Tribeca Union Square Verdi Square Vesuvio Playground Wards Island Washington Market Washington Square West Side Community Garden Winston Churchill Zuccotti
Brooklyn	American Veterans Memorial Pier Amersfort Asser Levy Bath Beach Betsy Head Bensonhurst Breukelen Ballfields Brooklyn Botanic Garden Brooklyn Bridge Brooklyn Heights Promenade Brooklyn–Queens Greenway Brower Bushwick Byrne Cadman Plaza Canarsie Carroll Calvert Vaux City Line Coffey Columbus Commodore Barry Coney Island Beach & Boardwalk Coney Island Creek Continental Army Plaza Cooper Dyker Beach Floyd Bennett Field Fort Greene Four Sparrow Marsh Frank M. Charles Fresh Creek Nature Preserve Friends Field Fulton Gravesend Green Central Knoll Herbert Von King Highland Irving Square JJ Byrne Jamaica Bay Park John J. Carty John Paul Jones Kaiser Kelly Leif Ericson Leon S. Kaiser Playground Lieutenant Joseph Petrosino Lincoln Terrace Linden Lindower Linton Manhattan Beach Maria Hernandez Marine McCarren McGolrick McKinley Mt. Prospect Owl's Head Paerdegat Basin Paerdegat Prospect Red Hook Robert E. Venable Saratoga Scarangella Seaside Seth Low Shore Spring Creek Steeplechase Sternberg St. Johns Sunset Tompkins Trinity Van Voorhees Walt Whitman Wingate WNYC Transmitter Zion Triangle
The Bronx	Baretto Point Bicentennial Veterans Bronx Castle Hill City Island Wetlands Claremont Concrete Plant Crotona Devoe Ewen Ferry Point Givans Creek Woods Grant Haffen Harding Harris Henry Hudson Hunts Point Jerome Joseph Rodman Drake Joyce Kilmer Julius Richman Macombs Dam Mill Pond Mullaly New York Botanical Garden North and South Brother Islands Orchard Beach Pelham Bay Rodman's Neck Playground 52 Poe Pugsley Creek Rainey Raoul Wallenberg Forest Richman Riverdale St. Mary's Seton Falls Seton Soundview Spuyten Duyvil Shorefront St. James St. Mary's Starlight Tremont University Woods Van Cortlandt Vidalia Vinmont Veteran Washington's Walk
Queens	Admiral Alley Alley Pond Andrews Grove Astoria Baisley Pond Bayside Fields Bayswater Beach Channel Big Bush Bowne Brant Point Wildlife Sanctuary Breininger Broad Channel American Park Broad Channel Park Broad Channel Wetlands Brooklyn–Queens Greenway Brookville Bulova Captain Tilly Crocheron Cunningham Det. Keith L. Williams Det. William T. Gunn Dr. Charles R. Drew Dubos Point Wildlife Sanctuary Doughboy Douglaston Elmhurst Evergreen Flushing Fields Flushing Meadows-Corona Forest Fort Tilden Fort Totten Francis Lewis Frank Golden Frank Principe Haggerty Harvey Highland Hinton Hoffman Hook Creek Hunter's Point Idlewild Jamaica Bay John Golden Juniper Valley Kissena Kohlreiter Square Libra Triangle Linnaeus Little Bay Louis Pasteur Mafera Macneil Marconi Marie Curie Montbellier O'Donohue Overlook Park of the Americas Phil "Scooter" Rizzuto Ofc. Edward Byrne Powell's Cove Queens County Farm Museum Queensbridge Rachel Carson Railroad Ralph Demarco Rochdale Rockaway Community Rufus King Seagirt Avenue Wetlands Socrates Sculpture Spring Creek Springfield St. Albans Travers Tudor Udall's Park Preserve Wayanda
Staten Island	Aesop Allison Pond Amundsen Circle Annadale Arbutus Woods Arden Woods Austen House Barrett Bayview Terrace Blood Root Valley Bloomingdale Blue Heron Park Preserve Blueberry Bradys Bunker Ponds Buono Beach Carlton Clove Lakes Clove's Tail Conference House Corporal Thompson Crescent Beach Deere Eibs Pond Faber Fairview Father Macris Forest Grove Fort Hill Fort Wadsworth FDR Boardwalk and Beach Freshkills Gaeta Great Kills Graniteville Quarry Graniteville Swamp Hero High Rock Hoffman Island Huguenot Ponds Hybrid Oak Woods Ingram Woods Isle of Meadows Jones Woods Joseph Manna King Fisher Kingdom Pond Last Chance LaTourette Lemon Creek Long Pond Gen. MacArthur Maple Woods Mariners Marsh Meredith Woods Midland Beach Midland Field Miller Field Mount Loretto Unique Area New Dorp Beach New York Chinese Scholar's Garden Northerleigh Park Ocean Breeze Old Place Creek Olmstead-Beil House Prall's Island Reed's Basket WIllow Swamp Richmond Terrace Wetlands Saw Mill Creek Marsh Schmul Seaside Wildlife Nature Shooters Island Siedenburg Silver Lake Snug Harbor Cultural Center & Botanical Garden Sobel Court South Beach Wetlands St. George Staten Island Greenbelt Staten Island Industrial Swinburne Island Tappen Tompkinsville Tottenville Shore Von Briesen Walker Wegener Westerleigh Westwood William T. Davis Wildlife Refuge Willowbrook Wolfe's Pond

Other

Nature centers	Alley Pond Belvedere Castle Blue Heron Crotona Dana Discovery Center Forest Fort Greene Fort Totten Greenbelt High Rock Inwood Hill Orchard Beach Prospect Salt Marsh Van Cortlandt
Zoos	Bronx Central Park Prospect Queens Staten Island
Botanical gardens	Brooklyn Botanic Conservatory New York Botanical Queens Botanical Staten Island Botanical New York Chinese Scholar's Wave Hill
Roosevelt Island	Lighthouse Southpoint
Other lists	World War I-related parks

Category
Department of Parks and Recreation
New York State
Commons

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