Flushing Meadows Park
The Flushing Meadows Corona Park (even Flushing Meadows Park or Flushing Meadows ) is a from the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation managed park in northern New York district of Queens . The largest park in Queens with 3.6 km² (897.62 acres ) was created on the occasion of the 1939/40 World's Fair , it also housed the 1964/65 World's Fair. He is known for one of the world's largest tennis tournaments, the US Open , which are held every year in the park.
The area was won in the 1930s by draining a swampy landscape of the same name . Flushing is the English name for the Dutch port city of Vlissingen , from which the first settlers in the region came.
The park today
The park has two lakes, Meadow and Willow, which flow into Long Island Sound via the Flushing River . The United Nations General Assemblies took place in the exhibition hall in the park from 1946 to 1950 . In the park is the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center (until the US Open 2006 the USTA National Tennis Center) with the Arthur Ashe Stadium , where the US Open will be played. The New York Mets baseball team also has its stadium ( Citi Field ) on the park grounds. Furthermore, there is the Queens Theater , the New York Hall of Science , the Queens Museum , at times an ice rink and various other sports fields.
The Unisphere , a giant globe made of stainless steel, the Observatory Towers and the New York State Pavilion , which has not been used since the 1964/65 World's Fair, have also been preserved from the 1964 World's Fair . The other buildings were dismantled after no new use had been found for them.
Re-measurement of the area
At 1,255 acres, the park was long considered the third largest park in New York. In an official document from 1936 a size of 1031 acres was specified, in the 1950s the area was officially 1257 acres. Since the 1980s, the park was on record with an area of 1255 acres. In 2010, the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation began an accurate re-survey of all of the city's parks. The results published in 2013 then revealed, to everyone's surprise, that the park is only 897.62 acres. It is assumed that one of the main reasons for this considerable difference is that the areas of several broad streets were included in earlier calculations. This affects the Grand Central Parkway , which ran through the park from the start, as well as the Van Wyck Expressway , Long Island Expressway and Jewel Avenue that were built later .
In the media
- Flushing Meadows Park starred in the 1997 science fiction comedy Men in Black . Agent J ( Will Smith ) and Agent K ( Tommy Lee Jones ) try to stop the cockroach ( Vincent D'Onofrio ) from leaving Earth in an observation tower that turns into an alien spaceship and crashes into the Unisphere .
- In the opening sequence of the comedy series King of Queens , Doug, Carrie and Arthur can be seen on the lawn in front of the Unisphere.
- In Grand Theft Auto IV and Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars , the park appears under the name "Meadows Park".
- In Iron Man 2 , the Flushing Meadows Park is the venue for the “Stark Expo”. Also in the film Captain America: The First Avenger , which takes place in the same universe, an exhibition takes place in the same place as early as 1943, with the anachronistic showing of the Unisphere.
Web links
- Website for the 1964 World's Fair in Flushing Meadows
- Website at the New York Department of Parks and Recreation
Individual evidence
- ^ A b Lisa W. Foderaro: How Big Is That Park? City Now Has the Answer. In: The New York Times . May 31, 2013, accessed July 16, 2013 .
- ↑ H. Gillmeister: cultural history of tennis. Wilhelm Fink Verlag, Munich 1990, ISBN 3-7705-2618-X , p. 263.
Coordinates: 40 ° 44 ′ 42 " N , 73 ° 51 ′ 2" W.