Pelham Bay Park

The Daily Plant : Friday, May 25, 2001

ORCHARD BEACH PREPARES FOR SUMMER

Parks has been planning for the opening of Orchard Beach since Labor Day weekend, adding features to make this summer safer, cleaner, and more fun than last year. This summer, before lifeguards come on duty each day at 10:00 a.m., the shoreline will be patrolled. Five nights a week, Maintenance and Operations teams will clean the beach after hours. The restrooms in section four of the beach are now equipped with automatic flush devices, and spray showers are being added to the promenade. 36 lifeguard chairs have been built, 32 picnic tables painted, and 2 colorful flowerbeds planted at the pavilion entrance.

Parks is also planning for the long-term life of Orchard Beach. Each season, 5,000 cubic yards of sand drift south. In this process, the grade of the beach is disturbed and some sand is lost forever. The Army Corps of Engineers is now conducting a study to determine how the sands of Orchard Beach can be replenished. The sands were originally brought to the beach by barge from Queens and New Jersey. Parks Commissioner Robert Moses tore down the 600 bungalows that were set up along the shore, and created the crescent shaped beach that gives Pelham Bay Park a reputation for summer fun. This summer, body surfers and beachcombers will enjoy the beach Moses left for New Yorkers, and the features Parks added this year.

All of Parks' seven beaches open tomorrow, Saturday, May 26. The will remain open every day from 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. until Labor Day.

PARKS' LIFERS

On Wednesday, May 18, Commissioner Henry J. (StarQuest) Stern welcomed Parkies of all eras, back to the Arsenal. Nearly 200 alumni gathered to reminisce and rekindle friendships. Since 1986, Parks has held periodic Lifetime Friends of Parks reunions which recognize that Parks breeds not only a professional culture, but a social and intellectual one too. In the season of university commencements, "graduates" of the last 18 years-former borough commissioners, maintenance workers, Rangers, scientists and equipment operators-returned.

THIRTEEN YEARS AGO IN THE PLANT
(Friday, May 27, 1988)

BRONX WORLD WAR I MEMORIAL RESTORED

In a special pre-Memorial Day celebration, six of the country's oldest veterans were honored yesterday morning at the dedication of the World War I Bronx Victory Memorial, restored at a cost of $15,000 donated by the Grand Marnier Foundation under the "Adopt-A-Monument" program.

Seated atop a vintage Rolls Royce, May Koch's Chief of Staff Diane Mulcahy Coffey, Emmanuel de Margerie, Ambassador of France to the United States, Michel Roux, director of the Grand Marnier Foundation and Commissioner Stern, drove north along Marion Avenue to Mosholu Parkway to the statue in what was dubbed "the world's shortest ticker-tape parade.

QUOTATION FOR THE DAY

"O Oysters, come and walk with us!
The Walrus did beseech.
A pleasant walk, a pleasant talk,
Along the briny beach."

Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) (1832-1898)

Know Before You Go

Pelham Bay Nature Center

Pelham Bay Park