Doughboy Park

Doughboy Park is a small triangular park at Woodside Avenue and 54th Street in the Woodside neighborhood of Queens. The park features a World War I memorial statue of a 'doughboy' (the nickname for American soldiers during the First World War), honoring local residents who served in the conflict.

The doughboy monument, depicting an American soldier in combat gear, is one of many such memorials erected across New York City's neighborhoods in the years following World War I. These monuments ensured that the sacrifices of local servicemembers were remembered in the communities they called home.

Woodside is a diverse residential neighborhood that has been home to successive waves of immigrants, from the Irish Americans who dominated the area for much of the 20th century to the Filipino, Mexican, Thai, and other communities that now share the neighborhood's streets and institutions.

The park features benches and plantings around the memorial, providing a small gathering space at a busy intersection. Woodside's commercial strip along Roosevelt Avenue is one of the most ethnically diverse commercial corridors in Queens, and the park sits near this bustling activity.

Doughboy Park connects modern Woodside to the World War I generation that left the neighborhood to fight in Europe, honoring their service in a small green space that the community still gathers around over a century later.