Inside scoop: The pool is almost exactly one acre in size.
Address: Bounded by Shore Boulevard, Ditmars Boulevard, 19th
Street, 21st Street and Hoyt Avenue, Astoria.
Baisley Pond Park is known in the West Indian community as
a great place to play cricket. But tennis, handball and basketball
players use the almost 110 acres, too, as do bicycle riders,
rollerbladers, joggers, picnickers and naturalists. Located near
North Conduit Avenue, the grounds also host an annual gospel
festival and puppet shows.
Inside scoop: Inside the park, the Sutphin Playground has
a sculpture of an American mastodon, an extinct elephant-like
animal that recalls the 1850s, when workers dredging the pond
found the bones of an individual that lived in the area almost
10,000 years ago, just after the end of the last ice age. Plus, the
Mother Carter Garden, which is surrounded by an ornamental
fence and has seating with views of the pond, memorializes Laura
“Mother” Carter (1914-1999), a beloved community leader.
Address: 118-21 Lakeview Blvd., South Jamaica.
Cunningham Park is about 360 acres in total, but it features
a 240-acre wildlife preserve consisting of real forest habitat,
vernal pools, and kettle ponds. The area has countless sports
fields, tree-lined jogging paths, play areas, and barbecue pits. It’s
named after W. Arthur Cunningham, a World War I veteran who
was elected city comptroller in 1933.
Inside scoop: The park has a 6.5-mile mountain bike trail with
a dirt jump park and pump track.
Address: Near the convergence of the Horace Harding
Expressway and Grand Central Parkway, bounded by Long
Island Expressway, Francis Lewis Boulevard, 210th Street, Hollis
Court Boulevard, Hollis Hills Terrace, Avon Road, 193rd Street,
Union Turnpike, 199th Street and Peck Avenue, Fresh Meadows.
Forest Park is a windy and hilly 538 acres with natural hiking
and horse-riding paths through what is called “knob and kettle”
terrain, thanks in large part to a glacier that passed through
about 20,000 years ago. Despite a few years of lumbering and
a chestnut blight in 1912, the park is filled with healthy, tall,
natural growth, 150-year-old trees (hickories, black cherries,
dogwoods) that create canopies. Visitors can explore an
abandoned railroad station, a 110-acre, nine-hole golf course and
two carousels. In the summertime, free concerts are offered at the
George Seuffert Sr. Bandshell.
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