Public park in the northern part of Queens is the fourth-largest public park in New York City

Overview

Flushing Meadows-Corona Park (often referred to as Flushing Meadows Park or simply Flushing Meadows) is a public park in the northern part of Queens in New York City. Flushing Meadows-Corona Park is the fourth-largest public park in New York City, with a total area of 897 acres.

Flushing Meadows-Corona Park was created as the site of the 1939 New York World's Fair and also hosted the 1964 New York World's Fair. Flushing Meadows-Corona Park retains much of the layout from the 1939 World's Fair. Its attractions include the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, the venue for the US Open tennis tournament; Citi Field, the home of the New York Mets baseball team; the New York Hall of Science; the Queens Museum; the Queens Theatre in the Park; the Queens Zoo; the Unisphere; and the New York State Pavilion.

Patrick Stahl, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons; Image Size Adjusted

Layout

The northern section of the park, the former fair grounds,[69] revolves around large paved pathways which during the fairs led to focal points such as pavilions, fountains and sculptures. The Trylon and Perisphere, and later Unisphere, were placed at the main axial point.[65][169][172] The Unisphere and Queens Museum currently sit at the west end of the main promenade. Near the center of the promenade (called Herbert Hoover Promenade on the north side, and Dwight D. Eisenhower Promenade on the south side) are the Fountains of the Fairs, which sit in the median of the paths. At the far east end is the Fountain of the Planets, originally called the Pool of Industry. This layout was used to guide fair goers to exhibits. The layout was based on Gian Lorenzo Bernini's plan for St. Peter's Square in Vatican City. The main promenade, measuring 2,500 feet (760 m), was provisionally called the "Cascade Mall" during its construction, and later named the "Constitution Mall" during the first fair. Many former exhibit and pavilion sites have since been replaced with soccer fields, while others have been left as open grass fields. The southern portion of the park is largely occupied by Meadow and Willow Lake.

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article "Flushing Meadows–Corona Park", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0