Maria Hernandez Park

Maria Hernandez Park is a 6.87-acre neighborhood park in Bushwick, bounded by Knickerbocker Avenue, Starr Street, Suydam Street, and Irving Avenue. The park was renamed in 1989 for Maria Hernandez, a community activist who was murdered in her home by drug dealers in 1989 after she organized neighbors to fight the open drug trade that plagued Bushwick's streets.

Hernandez's assassination shocked the city and galvanized anti-drug activism in neighborhoods across Brooklyn. Her courage in confronting drug dealers despite threats to her life made her a symbol of the community resistance that helped reclaim Bushwick's streets from the crack epidemic that devastated the neighborhood in the 1980s and early 1990s.

The park features a playground, basketball courts, and open areas that serve as the primary gathering space for the central Bushwick community. The park hosts community events, informal recreation, and the kind of everyday neighborhood socializing that Maria Hernandez fought to make possible by standing up to the violence that threatened to destroy her community.

Bushwick today is dramatically different from the neighborhood Hernandez knew: gentrification has brought galleries, restaurants, and rising rents, alongside the Latino and African American communities that have called the neighborhood home for generations. The park serves this evolving mix of residents.

Maria Hernandez Park carries the name of a woman who gave her life for her neighborhood. Her story is a reminder that the safe, usable public spaces New Yorkers enjoy today were often won through the extraordinary courage of ordinary residents who refused to accept that their streets and parks belonged to criminals.