Flushing Meadows Corona Park

Flushing Meadows Corona Park is an 897-acre park in central Queens, the largest park in the borough and the fourth-largest in all of New York City. The park was created by Robert Moses as the site of the 1939-40 World's Fair and hosted the 1964-65 World's Fair, events that left behind iconic structures including the Unisphere, the Queens Museum, and the New York Hall of Science.

Before the World's Fairs, the site was an ash dump memorably described by F. Scott Fitzgerald in The Great Gatsby as 'a valley of ashes,' a vast landscape of garbage and industrial waste. Moses transformed this wasteland into a grand exhibition ground, though the park's development displaced the largely immigrant community that had inhabited the area.

The Unisphere, a 140-foot-tall stainless steel globe built for the 1964 Fair, is the park's most iconic feature and the unofficial symbol of Queens. The structure is the largest globe in the world and has become one of the most recognized landmarks in New York City, featured in countless films and photographs.

The park contains an extraordinary concentration of cultural and sports facilities: the Queens Museum (housing the famous Panorama of the City of New York, a 9,335-square-foot architectural model of the entire city), the New York Hall of Science, the Queens Theatre, the Queens Zoo, Citi Field (home of the New York Mets), and the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center (home of the US Open).

The park's recreational facilities include Meadow Lake and Willow Lake (the largest bodies of fresh water in Queens), a public swimming pool, athletic fields, a pitch-and-putt golf course, playgrounds, and miles of walking and cycling paths. The park serves a diverse surrounding population that includes the heavily Latino community of Corona to the west and the predominantly Asian neighborhoods of Flushing to the east.

Flushing Meadows Corona Park embodies the grand, sometimes controversial vision of Robert Moses: a colossal public works project that transformed a wasteland into a world stage, leaving behind institutions and infrastructure that serve millions of New Yorkers. The park's ongoing evolution, including major investments in new facilities and landscape improvements, continues to shape the identity of central Queens.