Rev. Dr. Maggie Howard Playground

What was here before?

Stapleton was founded in 1836, and by the 1860s was home to a large German immigrant community who recognized the area’s beer brewing potential with its many fresh springs and hillsides for underground cool storage facilities. It is named for William Staples a merchant and ferry operator. By the 1870s Stapleton was the commercial center of Staten Island.  In 1898, Staten Island was consolidated into the City of New York, and a municipal ferry service to Manhattan opened a decade later.  The ferry service was quickly abandoned in favor of an international marine terminal during the 1920s, separating Stapleton from its waterfront.  In the 1970s, after the pier enclosures were torn down, the Stapleton community began to rebuild itself. 

How did this site become a playground?

The City of New York acquired this land in 1947 to be a Jointly Operated Playground.  Beginning in 1938, the Board of Education (now the Department of Education) agreed to provide land next to schools where NYC Parks could build and maintain playgrounds that could be used by the school during the day and the public on evenings and weekends. Construction began in 1949, and the site was opened to the public as P.S. 14 Playground on March 3, 1951 and offered a variety of recreational facilities in three separate sections.

After renovations in the late 1990s, the playground underwent a full reconstruction in 2020 as part of Parks’ Community Parks Initiative, a multi-faceted program to invest in under-resourced public parks and increase the accessibility and quality of parks throughout the five boroughs. The updated playground has new play equipment, a mini pool, improved basketball and handball areas, more welcoming entrances, and a large natural turf field, among other amenities.

Who is this playground named for?

In 2020, as part of an NYC Parks initiative to expand the representation of African Americans honored in parks, this playground was renamed to honor Reverend Dr. Maggie Howard (1963 – 2020). Howard was born and raised in New York City and lived in the nearby Stapleton Houses. She received her associate degree in finance from the College of Staten Island, a bachelor’s degree in Theology from Boulden Seminary in Delaware, and also took doctoral studies.  Howard was ordained in 1991 and was designated lead pastor of Stapleton A.M.E, the oldest African American church in Staten Island, in 2000.

Howard was known as a pillar of the community providing counseling and mentoring services working with organizations such as FEMA’s Project Hope for Hurricane Sandy victims. Howard worked to better the neighborhood as a mediator in the Cease Fire Program, an NYPD initiative to prevent gang-related violence, Peer Recovery Coach, and a Citizens Police Academy graduate. She spread her inspirational message of education and social justice to Stapleton and around the world through her missionary work until she died in 2020.