DEEP in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, along a path between Dinkins Circle and the Unisphere, is NYC Parks’ equivalent of the Island of Misfit Toys from TV’s “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” A grouping of park animals that includes an aardvark, camel, frog, elephant and a pair of dolphins. They were abandoned when the parks they had occupied were renovated and they were left without jobs.
The park beasts were given their own retirement party as the Home for Retired Park Animals was dedicated in July 2023.
Here’s the thing about this new area, though. It displays NYC Park’s latest and greatest in public path paving and state of the art benches. Flushing Meadows contains many different bench designs, including designs from the 1939 Fair as well as the 1964 Fair, which I will get to in a future post.
Parks also has new genre of distinctive signage in Flushing Meadows, pale green with what appears to be the font ITC Franklin (basically Franklin with a taller x-height). Parks hasn’t been this whimsical or witty in its signage since the days of Henry Stern, Rudy Giuliani’s Parks commissioner in the 1990s.
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1/8/25
5 comments
It is always comforting to know that some part of the huge NYC bureaucracy has a sense of humor. (Humor is how we manage to cope with frustration and other ills.) Many will remember Mayor Koch’s Department of Transportation signs that warned “Don’t Even THINK of Parking Here”.
That is ironic since all three are clowns.
Amen on sense of humor. Another example which leapt immediately to mind: hard by the entrance to Fort Tryon Park, just away from the A train’s 190th Street station, is a sign saying “NYC’s Coolest Office (People really work here, I swear)”, indicating a very neat-o little cottage on the cliff, which seems to house the Fort Tryon Park Trust. Lemme take a shot at linking the Street View:
https://maps.app.goo.gl/sea862vLG6d4gpCo7
I thought the Island of Misfit Toys was from Pinnochio…? Am I misremembering?
Rudolph