Madison Square Park

The Daily Plant : Friday, November 9, 2001

LEFFERTS PLAYGROUND MADE NOUVEAU

Parks, the Locust Grove Civic Association, and Borough President Claire (Queens Bee) Shulman, Council Member Juanita (Idlewild) Watkins put their heads together and revived Lefferts Playground in less than one year. From an under-used, unsafe playground dominated by concrete, they made a park.

Project Manager Emmanuel Thingue redesigned the playground to solve its former problems. He moved the entrance to the playground from a dangerous location off a busy road to a new location across from a traffic light. He employed an imaginative Art Nouveau theme that draws users into the center of the park where a wrought iron water lily grows from the concrete. He eliminated an unpopular ballfield and replaced it with new attractions such as metal picnic tables with accompanying metal chairs, trees, planting beds, and winding pathways. A large, lush lawn was established for passive park use and color seal coating was added to the renovated basketball courts. Fences stand guard around the perimeter of the park and a state-of-the-art modular play equipment is ready for climbing kids.

Borough President Shulman and Council Member Watkins allocated $1.3 million for the job. Contractor Doyle Baldante promised the children that work would be complete in time for Halloween. The ribbon was cut on Monday, October 29. Borough President Shulman; Council Member Watkins; Commissioner Henry J. (StarQuest) Stern; Richard (Ricardo) Murphy, Queens Borough Commissioner; Elizabeth Braton, Chair of Community Board Number 10; and Donna Gilmartin, President of the Locust Grove Civic Association, welcomed community residents into the reconstructed facility.

The 118^th National Horse Show began on Friday November 2. This year’s show, presented at Madison Square Park, will benefit the PEP Mounted Unit and volunteers with the Mounted Auxiliary. Commissioner Henry J. (StarQuest) Stern thanked the National Horse Show for their support before he cut a ribbon, symbolically opening the stadium for competition. The ceremony included a musical ride by six mounted and two auxiliary officers and appearances by the NYPD marching band and canine unit.

Parks’ horses are not only beautiful animals and athletes, they are public servants. They assist in our efforts to ensure a safe city for all who would visit public spaces, such as New York’s more than 28,000 acres of parkland. Horses play a unique role in parks. They patrol woodlands and heavy terrain like streams and rocky cliffs. They assist in crowd control and enable us to bridge the distance between officers and citizens. Parks’ animals are approachable and made more so by an equine education program, Horse of Course. Because public safety is at the forefront of New Yorkers’ minds, now is an appropriate moment to thank the animals and their riders as well as Richard (Bronco) Gentles, Director of the Parks Enforcement Patrol; Jay (Huey) Entwhistle, President of the Parks Mounted Auxiliary; and Eugene Mische, Chairman of the National Horse Show who sustain the programs through which they are employed.

(Friday, November 18, 1988)

Ever dream of taking a grand bicycle tour of the hidden New York City, past acres if rolling hills, gleaming lakes and sylvan corners that dot our 26,000-acre parks system? You will soon have that chance when a Brooklyn-Queens "Greenway" envisioned by environmental groups and the City is completed.

"Boys, be ambitious! Be ambitious not for money or for selfish aggrandizement, not for that evanescent thing which men call fame.

Be ambitious for the attainment of all that a man ought to be."

William Smith Clark (1826-1886)

"Now these are the Laws of the Jungle, many and mighty are they;

But the head and the hoof of the Law and the haunch and the hump is "Obey!"

Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)