Alley Pond Park is the second-largest public park in Queens, New York City, occupying . The park is bordered to the east by Douglaston, to the west by Bayside, to the north by Little Neck Bay, and to the south by Union Turnpike. The Cross Island Parkway travels north-south through the park, while the Long Island Expressway and Grand Central Parkway travel east-west through the park. The park primarily consists of woodlands south of the Long Island Expressway and meadowlands north of the expressway. It is run and operated by the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation.
Alley Pond Park was mostly acquired and cleared by the city in 1929, as authorized by a resolution of the New York City Board of Estimate in 1927. The park contains the Queens Giant, a tulip poplar (Liriodendron tulipifera) that is the tallest carefully measured tree in New York City and possibly the oldest living thing in the New York metropolitan area. The Alley Pond Environmental Center (APEC), with a library, museum and animal exhibits, is located in the northern part of the park, on the south side of Northern Boulevard.
History
Site What is now Alley Pond Park was once home to the Matinecock Native Americans, who harvested shellfish from Little Neck Bay. The English began to colonize the area by the 1630s, when Charles I granted Thomas Foster , on which he built a stone cottage near what is now Northern Boulevard. Mills were built on Alley Creek by Englishmen Thomas Hicks and James Hedges. The valley also contained the region's first mail route, established in 1764. Colonists also used the valley as a route to Brooklyn, the Hempstead Plains and the Manhattan ferries, and U.S. president George Washington is thought to have used this route for his 1790 tour of Long Island. The valley's usage as a passage, or perhaps its shape, may ultimately account for its name; in any case, an 18th-century commercial and manufacturing center there became known as "the Alley". In 1828, the Burhman general store was opened, becoming the only store in the area.
On the west side of the valley, William Douglas (the namesake of the Douglaston neighborhood on the east side) bought around Oakland Lake in 1827. The lake itself was named after another estate, Frederick N. Lawrence's "The Oaks": that estate was named because of the many oak trees nearby, and was the namesake of the Oakland Gardens neighborhood on the valley's west side. In 1896–1897, the Oaks became the Oakland Golf Club. The lake itself was used as a water source by the town of Flushing from the 19th century through the creation of the City of Greater New York in 1898, when the city built a water pumping plant on the lake; by the early 20th century, the city took its water from upstate reservoirs.
Despite the valley's commercial center and light industrial uses that dated back to Hicks' and Hedges' mills, the area remained agricultural and largely unspoiled into the 20th century. In 1908, as motorists sought attractive areas for expeditions, William Kissam Vanderbilt built his privately run Long Island Motor Parkway through the area.
Founding and early history By the 1920s, with open space becoming less plentiful, the City of New York began setting aside land for parks. Queens borough president Maurice E. Connolly wrote a letter to the city in 1927, suggesting that the tributary of the Little Neck Bay south of Northern Boulevard could be acquired for one such park called Alley Park. His successor Bernard M. Patten also supported the purchase of the land, and Douglaston civics groups argued in favor of the park. After the New York City Board of Estimate passed a resolution in 1927 to allow the acquisition of parkland, the city acquired the Alley site for such purposes on June 24, 1929. Later that year, the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation (NYC Parks) expanded the park into a landscape surrounding the Alley and removed some older structures, including the Burhman store. After this acquisition had been approved, Mayor James J. Walker declared that "there is no better site in Queens" for a park. NYC Parks acquired Oakland Lake for Alley Pond Park in 1934.
NYC Parks then began work on converting the park for public use. The northern section of the land became a nature preserve. In the southern section, a field house and numerous sports fields for soccer, baseball, tennis, and hockey were built. These sections officially opened in 1935 with a ceremony attended by Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia and Parks Commissioner Robert Moses. At opening, the park had of new playing fields; the Alley Pond Park Nature Trail, the first of its kind in the city; a bird sanctuary; bridle paths; tennis court; picnic areas; and a 200-space parking lot. NYC Parks added a bicycle path in the 1930s, having acquired and converted Vanderbilt's parkway. It runs west into Cunningham Park as part of the Brooklyn-Queens Greenway from Bayside to Prospect Park and Coney Island. The path opened in 1938. Part of the southern section of Alley Pond Park was renovated into a nature trail and reopened in 1940.
Recreation and pollution
After the 1930s, NYC Parks had focused more on recreation in Alley Pond Park than on the park's conservation. NYC Parks filled in much of the valley's marshlands to construct recreational facilities and roads, namely the Cross Island Parkway and Long Island Expressway. The construction of the Cross Island Parkway resulted in the park's namesake pond being reduced in size. By 1954, when the Long Island Expressway was built, Alley Pond was infilled to create the interchange between the two highways; the expressway opened in 1957 The center portion of the park, surrounding Alley Creek, was not developed through the mid-20th century and was considered an "eyesore". A 1959 proposal to add along the bay to Alley Pond Park was controversial among Douglaston landowners, who wanted the land to be used for a commercial amusement center. The related legislation was rejected almost unanimously by the New York City Council, with only the two representatives of borough president John T. Clancy voting in favor of the expansion.
The Oakland Golf Club disbanded in 1952 but served as a city-operated course until 1961, after which it was developed into the Queensborough Community College, Benjamin N. Cardozo High School, and tract housing. This contributed to pollution in the Oakland Lake section of Alley Pond Park. In 1969, mayor John Lindsay broke ground on the renovation of the badly deteriorated Alley Park Extension at the north end of the park. Ford Motor Company bought a lot on the northern side of Northern Boulevard in 1968, intending to build an automotive showroom there, but the company's plan was controversial, and was rejected by the New York City Board of Standards and Appeals. Another lawsuit was filed in 1977 to prevent the construction of a tennis spa next to Alley Pond Park, which the plaintiffs argued would cause pollution in the park, though the spa owners won the lawsuit.
Conservation
By the 1960s, civic groups were advocating for Alley Pond Park's restoration. Two thousand people participated in the first "Walk in the Alley" in 1969, led by Queensborough Community College dean John O. Riedl. Local groups also argued for the preservation of Alley Pond and Cunningham Parks. The city's park system was in various states of disrepair by the 1970s, with a maintenance building at Alley Pond Park having burned down. NYC Parks also cut staffing at numerous parks: though Alley Pond Park was maintained by 17 workers in 1970, that number decreased to 11 in 1972. The agency commenced the Wetlands Reclamation Project in 1974 to rehabilitate the park's natural wetlands. NYC Parks also dredged the creek, leveled surrounding areas to eliminate standing water, cleaning three freshwater springs and two freshwater ponds, landscaping paths and trails, and building sound-reducing berms on Northern Boulevard. In addition, some of the park's tennis courts were renovated.
The Alley Pond Environmental Center (APEC), founded in 1972, moved to its own building on Northern Boulevard four years later. The city also acquired over $10.9 million worth of land for the park. An 1870s-era windmill away at Arleigh Road, on the Douglaston peninsula, was relocated to the park when the windmill's original site was threatened with development, and was intended to be used as an APEC exhibit; however, the windmill was burned in an arson two years later. APEC volunteers raised money to build a replica, which was completed in 2005. On the other side of the park, Gertrude Waldeyer led an advocacy group to preserve Oakland Lake, leading NYC Parks to spend $1 million restoring the lake in 1987, with the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation designating the surrounding area as freshwater wetlands the next year. In 1993, almost $1 million was spent to restore the Picnic Grove, renovate two stone buildings, and reconstruct the playground and soccer field. By the mid-1990s, development around Alley Pond Park had led to pollution, including in Oakland Lake in the western section of the park. This led local groups to propose that the city hire an administrator to run numerous parks in eastern Queens, including Alley Pond Park, Crocheron Park, Cunningham Park, Douglaston Park, Fort Totten, and Udalls Cove.
A proposal to renovate the interchange between the Cross Island Parkway and Long Island Expressway was announced in 1995, leading conservationists to raise concerns over the potential removal of trees. The interchange plan was approved in 2000. With the renovation of the interchange, of the interchange were reclaimed for park usage, and Alley Pond was restored. The project was completed in 2005. The area around Oakland Lake was restored again in 2011. The Alley Pond Environmental Center relocated to a temporary location at 224–75 76th Avenue in Oakland Gardens in 2019, after a renovation of its Northern Boulevard headquarters had begun that September. The renovation of the APEC building was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The restored complex is now open and tours are scheduled daily.
Geography At , Alley Pond Park is the second-largest public park in Queens, behind Flushing Meadows–Corona Park, and the ninth-largest public park in the city. It occupies part of a terminal moraine, a ridge of sand and rock, that was formed by a glacier 15,000 years ago, at the southern terminus of the Laurentide Ice Sheet. Boulders dropped by the glaciers on the hillsides of the southern end of the park still remain, as do scattered kettle ponds formed by melting ice. The valley features both fresh water, draining into the valley from the hills and bubbling up from natural springs, and salt water from Little Neck Bay. This promotes ecodiversity, with freshwater and saltwater wetlands, tidal flats, meadows, and forests accommodating abundant bird life. Much of the park is part of the Alley Pond nature preserve.
Waterways Alley Creek
Alley Creek flows northward through the valley within which the park is located, emptying into Little Neck Bay. Alley Creek is surrounded by some of the last remaining old-growth forest in Queens. The creek is crossed by a masonry-and-metal span carrying Northern Boulevard and a viaduct carrying the Long Island Rail Road's Port Washington Branch. A stream from Oakland Lake, which was buried after the Cross Island Parkway was built, is a left-bank tributary of Alley Creek.
Ponds In addition to Alley Creek, there are seven ponds in Alley Pond Park, all of which are kettle ponds. These ponds are Alley Pond, Cattail Pond, Lily Pad Pond, Little Alley Pond, Muskrat Pond, Turtle Pond, and Windmill Pond.