Fort Totten Park
Beautiful Day For It!
It was gorgeous out this past Sunday. It was bright and sunny and warm, there was a food fair lining ninth avenue that I had respectably gorged myself on, then spent barely even a frustrating train-and-bus journey to the farthest reaches of Queens. It was the perfect day for wandering around a lovely park and getting my face perfectly sunburnt in the process.
Fort Totten was established in 1862 as the Fort at Willets Point, and was renamed in 1898. The location was chosen specifically as the closest point to Fort Schuyler, on the other side of the East River in the Bronx. The two army forts would serve as a “pinch point” to be able to attack any would-be invading ships trying to attack New York City from the East River from the North. In the first and second World Wars, the military focus on Fort Totten shifted from defense to mobilization and training. It is now primarily in use as a public park, but still maintains a military presence as the 533rd Brigade Support Battallion of the US Army Reserve.
They helpfully provided a map with a full walking tour of the historic buildings and spaces that you could visit in Fort Totten Park, each of which would have a sign in front explaining the origins and history of the structure. Armed with this, I set out.
Fans of the Museums Project will remember my visit to the Bayside Historical Society from a few months back, and I thought of it fondly as I passed it by.
It was at this point in my wandering, following the map and photographing these buildings that a man approached me. He was an older man with sun-leathered skin.
“Excuse me,” he said. “Would you like to see the oldest tree in Queens?”
“Very much!” I said.
He introduced himself as Alan and led me back towards the Bayside Historical Society. He explained that the large tree growing behind it had recently been examined by a team of arborists— there was some question about whether it had always been one large tree or a group of three or more smaller trees which grew into each other— who said that it was approximately three hundred years old, and the oldest tree in Queens.
It should be noted that I have no verification of this information. There was no plaque or anything marking the tree as historic as it is. All I’m going on here is Alan’s word.
We walked together a little longer, as he had offered to show me some of the other sites in the park, but when he started to expand on some of his ideas for movies that he wants to make but he thinks “Hollywood is too politically correct to go through with” I excused myself, saying that I’d keep following the self-guided trail on my own.
The numbering system for the walking tour has the last two stops at the Fort Totten Park visitors center and the actual civil war-era Fort itself, so it was not until the very end of my long walk through the park that I found out that these two main pieces of it had closed for the day about thirty minutes before I arrived.
Sometimes a museum or a historical site is a grand and fulfilling experience that radically changes your perspective on the world. Sometimes it is just a warm and sometimes weird and sometimes frustrating walk through a park in Queens. I’m glad to have done it and spent some time there, and I am also glad to not be making that very long journey again anytime soon.
ADMISSION: Free
GIFT SHOP: No
BATHROOM: Yes
WHEELCHAIR ACCESSIBLE: Yes
May 25: Center for Book Arts
June 1: Fort Wadsworth
June 8: Fotografiska
June 15: Fraunces Tavern
Don’t go walking off with random leathery-skinned experts!
That tree is DOPE!!!