SITUATED at a bend on Hillside Avenue on the border of Jamaica Hills is a hidden war memorial that wasn’t always as clandestinely placed as it is today. On a pedestal stands a bronze angel, carrying both a sword and a laurel wreath, representing war and peace, memorializing Civil War casualties from Queens.
Sculpted by French Alsatian-born Frederic Wellington Ruckstuhl, it was initially placed on a traffic island in the center of Hillside Avenue’s intersection with Merrick Boulevard in 1896; postcards and old photographs from the early 20th Century show the neighborhood’s transition from undeveloped suburbia to heavily citified. The postcard above was cut in the early 1900s. At last, by 1960, the Soldiers and Sailors monument was in too inconvenient a spot for the now heavily-trafficked intersection, and it was moved about a mile east to Major Mark Park, named in 1933 for a local soldier, Major John W. Mark, who lost his life in World War I.
Amazingly this oblong plot, defined by a bend in Hillside Avenue and Warwick Crescent between 173rd and `175th, was first earmarked as public space by Jamaica Village as far back as 1837; but it did not formally become a park until 1920. Unfortunately, on my visits to the area, the park seems to have become a gathering place for the local homeless, but there for God’s grace go I.
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7/19/23
1 comment
What a shame. A memorial for a heroic figure has become just another “needle park”. “Needle parks” are memorials to the long legacy of failure in America’s cities. Where’s the outrage?