By Kenneth Kowald
It was going to be called “Gas Tank Park.” Not the most beautiful name, but thanks to community objections, it will be “Elmhurst Park.”
In the area where it will open to the public beginning next year, it will be a much−needed greenspace.
I should know. I grew up near there.
My parents’ attached bungalow on 57th Avenue in Elmhurst was south of the Long Island Rail Road tracks. There were many vacant lots around us. As children, we did not realize we lacked green space. Every home had a small front yard and a pretty good−sized back one.
We could belly−wop down the hill alongside the tracks when the snow was right. We tried to play baseball on an open plain above our houses, which I later learned was known as Nassau Heights. There were woods above the plain and then some houses at the top of the hill. You could see the Empire State Building from there.
I walked up 84th Street and down to Woodhaven Boulevard to attend a kiddie show and a full program of two films and the news at the Drake Theater Saturday mornings. There was a farm at the intersection of Woodhaven Boulevard and Eliot Avenue and I would cut across a corner of it. A pedestrian footbridge now spans the Long Island Expressway at 84th Street.
The 200−foot−tall gas tanks were there. They were built in the early part of the century and used for decades by what became the Brooklyn Union Gas Co., first to hold its manufactured gas and then the natural gas that came to the East Coast in the early 1950s from gas fields in the Southwest. They became landmarks to so many drivers when the LIE was built after World War II. The vehicular lanes pass over where we tried to play baseball.
In recent years, thanks to advances in technology, the tanks were no longer needed, unused and torn down. Fortunately, the site was bought by the city for $1 and where those behemoths once stood there will be Elmhurst Park. I passed that area every weekday when I walked to JHS 73 in Maspeth or took the trolley on Grand Avenue to the school.
There is a lack of public greenspace in that area of Queens and the new park will be most welcome. The building of the LIE resulted in a narrow playground area along 57th Avenue from 80th to 84th streets, but even with some trees and shrubs, this does not relieve the lack of greenery in an area much built−up since my childhood.
I first visited the new park on a bright Sunday afternoon in early January and have been back since. A fence surrounds the six−acre site. There will be entrances from 57th Avenue, between 80th Street and the railroad tracks, and on Grand Avenue at 79th Street. There will be as many as 500 trees planted and the central area has been raised so a hillock gives a needed sense of space to what might have seemed like monotonous flat land. Large groups of boulders dot the landscape.
In April, the city Parks Department staff received the Open Spaces Award for work on the park from the NYC Partnership of Brownfield Practicioners.
The park will not be completed and opened until next year. It will include a sitting area, restrooms, a spray shower fountain, an orchard of crab apple trees, a site for a possible Vietnam War memorial, a toddler area, jungle gyms and stationary bicycles that will be able to power park lampposts.
For an old Elmhurst kid, it is an impressive sight. It will mean much for a growing community. Elmhurst Park will be the lungs of the area and the residents will make good use of it. It will be worth every penny of the estimated $20 million the city has spent on it.
While the name has been changed for the better, signs informing visitors about the gas tanks will be placed in Elmhurst Park. And here is a thought: Perhaps some philanthropist could donate funds so gas lamps would be erected at the entrances. They could be lit each twilight and those traveling above my old playing field on Nassau Heights or on Grand Avenue might see a new landmark on their journeys.
