A Visit To Flushing Meadows Corona Park, Queens, NY
Read more articles on Travel Planning and Parks and Zoos.July 21, 2008
Posted by neillevine
July 21, 2008
Posted by neillevine
436 Views
Having just posted a positive essay on my recent visit to the New York Aquarium, I decided it might be worthwhile to visit some of the other Wildlife Conservation Society’s urban zoological parks in the city, so I decided that I might start with the Queens Zoo.
Even though the Bronx Zoo might have more to offer, as it is far bigger, I have fond memories of my last visit to Flushing Meadows Corona Park, where the Queens Zoo is located and I thought I would take a look at Willets Point and Shea Stadium amongst other attractions in the neighborhood of the park.
I walked around the parking lot that separates my building from the elevated train station and climbed up to the F Train IND platform, two stories above street level. I made an extra effort to check out the neighborhood from the station but while there are views of the streets and nearby buildings, it is mostly another typical Brooklyn neighborhood, in my opinion, not a lot to look at. The view of Coney Island Creek was obscured by local buildings bordering it.
The first leg of the trip is on an above ground elevated line so I saw a lot of sights I was familiar with, having walked or driven by frequently in the past. So far, no surprises here.
I got off the F Train at Forty-Second Street and switched to the 7 Line that I knew from previous experience would take me to Willets Point Shea Stadium, my planned destination. From the elevated IIRT train there are nice views of several Queens neighborhoods, most of which I am not familiar with, mostly big, locally used buildings, some of which like Aviation High School, are easy to identify. I noticed a lot of satellite dishes along the way.
It took me an hour and a half to get to my destination. As the train pulled into the station, I noticed an impressive sight two matching gigantic baseball stadiums, rising up into the sky like twin birthday cakes, the old Shea Stadium and the new Citifield, under construction, both big, big, big. By way of comparison, I live near the fairly new (2001) Keyspan Park, home of the Brooklyn Cyclones and these two baseball castles each dwarfed that stadium big time. A comparison of seating capacity, approximately 50,000 to 7,000 should give you a better idea of big major league Citifield is in comparison to minor league Keyspan. It’s like comparing two frosted cakes to one vanilla cupcake.
I walked over a wooden boardwalk past a big parking lot and an even bigger train yard towards what is called an esplanade to get to Flushing Meadows Corona Park’s entrance where there were several prominent markers dedicated to memorializing the 1939 and 1964 Worlds Fairs that were held in the park.
There was a fast food stand at the entrance selling soda, hot dogs, chips and the like that I bought a two dollar big breaded pretzel at to enjoy on my way home. A small pleasure after a nice afternoon.
I should note that Flushing Meadow is a very big park, competitive in size with Central Park in Manhattan and Prospect Park in Brooklyn. In the distance, I noticed some busy tennis courts and an even busier children’s playground. By way of exact comparison, Flushing Meadows is listed at 1,255 acres, while Central Park is billed at 843 acres and Prospect Park is listed at 588 acres with these numbers giving a clear idea of rank by size.
I headed towards the USTA Arthur Ashe Stadium, also known as the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, to be politically correct, where a WNBA Liberty basketball game was just played before a disputed crowd of less than 24,000, by foot, passing a parking lot and a Long Island Railroad train depot along the way.
In my visits over the years, there have been some people in the park, although it has never been crowded. There is lots of grass, benches, displays of flowers, woodlands, bodies of water even, for some reason, fire hydrants.
At first, I was lost ending up at the Unisphere, a multi-story globe of the world build by U.S. Steel, and near the Queens Museum, but after asking I a nice passerby where was the zoo, I was directed to cross a bridge spanning the Grand Central Parkway and then proceed directly to the zoo.
While I did finally get to the zoo, I did not get to see some of the other attractions Flushing Meadow Corona Park is famous for, including the New York Hall of Science, also known as the Queens Children’s Science Museum, Meadow Lake, boating or the children’s carousel.
Perhaps I can visit those attractions at a later time. I will continue on to the Queens Zoo in a second part to this essay.
Copyright © 2006
Terms & Conditions
