Joyce Kilmer Park

Joyce Kilmer Park is a 6.9-acre park along the Grand Concourse at East 164th Street in the Concourse neighborhood of the South Bronx. The park is named for Joyce Kilmer, the American poet best known for his 1913 poem 'Trees,' who was killed in action during World War I at the age of 31.

Kilmer's poem 'Trees,' with its famous opening line 'I think that I shall never see / A poem lovely as a tree,' became one of the most widely memorized and recited poems in American literature. Despite its simplicity (which drew criticism from literary modernists), the poem's celebration of nature resonated deeply with the American public.

The park's location along the Grand Concourse, the Bronx's grandest boulevard, places it amid some of the finest Art Deco apartment buildings in the city. The Concourse was designed in 1909 as the Bronx's Champs-Elysees, and its architectural heritage was recognized with historic district designation in 2011.

The park features the Lorelei Fountain, a bronze sculpture originally created as a memorial to the German poet Heinrich Heine, which was relocated to Joyce Kilmer Park in 1999. The fountain depicts the legendary Lorelei siren along with allegorical figures.

Joyce Kilmer Park provides a literary and historic anchor along the Grand Concourse, honoring a poet who celebrated the beauty of trees in a park lined with the very things he loved most. For the community surrounding the park, it serves the everyday function of providing green space in a dense urban neighborhood.