Shirley Chisholm State Park

Shirley Chisholm State Park is a 407-acre state park on the Jamaica Bay shoreline in southeastern Brooklyn, the largest state park in New York City. Named for Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman elected to Congress and the first Black candidate to seek a major party's presidential nomination and the first woman to seek the Democratic Party's nomination, the park opened in 2019 on the site of two former landfills.

Chisholm represented Brooklyn's 12th Congressional District from 1969 to 1983, championing education, healthcare, and the rights of women, children, and minorities. Her 1972 presidential campaign, running with the slogan 'Unbought and Unbossed,' shattered barriers and inspired generations of women and people of color to pursue political leadership.

The park was created through the remediation and capping of the Pennsylvania Avenue and Fountain Avenue landfills, which received the city's garbage for decades before closing. The transformation of contaminated landfills into a public park is one of the most ambitious environmental reclamation projects in the city's history.

The park features over 10 miles of hiking and cycling trails, waterfront access along Jamaica Bay, kayak launches, and hilltop viewpoints that provide panoramic views of the bay, the Manhattan skyline, and the marine environment. The park's grasslands and wetlands support diverse bird populations and native plant communities.

Shirley Chisholm State Park serves the historically underserved communities of East New York and Canarsie, providing large-scale outdoor recreation in neighborhoods that have some of the lowest ratios of park space to population in the city. The park's creation represents a commitment to environmental justice: the same communities that bore the burden of the landfills now benefit from the park built upon them.

The park honors a woman who refused to accept limits on what was possible, transforming garbage dumps into green space just as Chisholm transformed the boundaries of American politics. For the communities of southeastern Brooklyn, the park is both a recreational amenity and a statement that they deserve the best the city can offer.