Before the Kleins sold it in 2003, this 1.4-acre property was the last family farm left in NYC and the final remnant of what was once a 200-acre spread purchased by Adam Klein in the 1890s. As of 1990, according to the Associated Press, the Kleins were growing "beets, carrots, scallions, radishes, basil, dill, parsley, cucumbers, squash, and kohlrabies" — "stuff that doesn't need that much room to grow" — on what I would guess was about half an acre of cultivated land located behind the old farmhouse pictured above. (The playground next door, which sits on land once owned by the family, is named Farm Playground in honor of the farm's unlikely longevity.)
Much to the chagrin of preservation-minded neighbors and civic leaders, who were hoping the farm could be maintained and run by the Queens County Farm Museum, the Kleins sold the place (for $4.3 million) to the notorious — and felonious — Huang family of developers. The Huangs subsequently leased the property to Ziming Shen, who opened a Preschool of America (a chain owned by Mr. Shen and his wife, Joanna Fan) on the site. In 2012, Ms. Fan and Mr. Shen pleaded guilty to embezzling $2.7 million of federal funds meant to provide food for children at their Red Apple chain of preschools. In 2014, despite being delinquent on the $5.2 million judgment from the Red Apple case, Mr. Shen bought the old farm from the Huangs for $5.6 million. The property lies within a "special planned community preservation district", making it difficult to develop, but the high sale price has local leaders concerned that Mr. Shen, who has already illegally cut down trees on the site, has some kind of underhanded scheme in mind.
Ford Pintos had a notorious (if unfair) "reputation for bursting into flames when hit from behind in collisions", a fact I learned as a kid when my dad explained to me this scene from the movie Top Secret! 1.5 million 1971-76 Pintos were eventually recalled, and one case of an exploding Pinto in Indiana led to Ford being charged with reckless homicide, the first time a US corporation was ever tried on criminal charges. (The corporation won.)
For the record, here are the model years of the three cars pictured above. Blue: 1975. Brown: 1974. Green: 1971.
in Cunningham Park. This recreational path mostly follows (though not at this particular location) the former route of the Long Island Motor Parkway from Cunningham Park to Alley Pond Park.
These concrete posts, found along the recreational path that connects Cunningham and Alley Pond Parks, are remnants of the old Long Island Motor Parkway, "the first highway built exclusively for the automobile".
PS 205, the Alexander Graham Bell School, is located on Bell Boulevard. The school is named, of course, for the inventor of the telephone* (hence the adjacent Telephone Playground). Bell Boulevard, on the other hand, takes its name from Abraham Bell and his family, whose farm it bisected back when it was still just a 19th-century country lane.
* Some would take issue with that claim.
Queens's Cunningham Park is one of three city parks with mountain bike trails, the other two being Highbridge Park in Manhattan — whose trails I passed back in the early days of this walk — and Wolfe's Pond Park in Staten Island. According to the NY Times, all three sets of trails are in areas that "were de facto dumping grounds before volunteers did some heavy lifting, both in persuading the city to allow the mountain biking and in actually removing discarded tires, refrigerators and stoves."
(While we're on the subject of biking in the woods, I should also mention the now-ruined bike course that once stood on the North Shore of Staten Island, a glorious, homemade wooden track hidden inside a thin strip of trees along the waterfront.)
Like Highbridge Park, Cunningham Park offers a dirt jump course along with its mountain bike trails. Here's some video of the jumps in use.
Charred logs and empty beverage containers sit beside the dirt jumps in Cunningham Park.
This wraparound bench can be found at the main location of PS 4 (a.k.a. P4Q), a multi-site school for severely emotionally challenged and/or autistic children. The P4Q building here in Fresh Meadows originally served as PS 179, the Lewis Carroll School, and later as the Japanese School of New York, which was one of only two full-time Japanese grade schools in the country when the Associated Press wrote about it in 1987.
The two benches pictured above are part of a memorial garden at St. Francis Preparatory School. The garden is dedicated "in loving memory of the deceased alumni and friends of the St. Francis community", according to the plaque, dated November 4, 2001, mounted beneath the statue of St. Francis of Assisi that stands at the center of the garden.
St. Francis, said to be the largest Catholic high school in the US, is the alma mater of Vince Lombardi, Joe Torre, and Frank Serpico, among others. It was in the news in 2013 following a lawsuit by Marla (formerly Mark) Krolikowski, a long-serving, popular teacher who was fired after acknowledging to school officials that she was transgender.
UPDATE: A few months after my visit to St. Francis, Ms. Krolikowski passed away at the age of 62.
The name of this playground, which was bestowed upon it during — obviously — Henry Stern's reign as Parks commissioner, pays tribute to Phil Rizzuto and his well-known catch phrase. This is now the second Parks property we've seen named for the former Yankee shortstop. The first was Richmond Hill's Phil "Scooter" Rizzuto Park, the center of New York's avian speed-singing scene.
If the Captains Endowment Association placard displayed in the windshield is any indication, this car belongs to a high-ranking member of the NYPD.
