Maritcha R. Lyons Park

Exiting Susan Smith McKinney Steward Park (see the previous post) you can walk under the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway (BQE) and find another little park, this one older. Formerly generically called Bridge Park I, this little triangle was renamed in 2020 Maritcha R. Lyons Park in an ongoing effort to honor prominent African American women from New York City.

Had you heard of Susan Smith McKinney Steward before reading this blog? I'll wager not. And the same probably goes for Lyons.

But first, the BQE underpass. It's a gritty contrast to most of newly gentrified Dumbo. You can't deny its positivity, though.

Inside the park, the expressway looms along the side.

The colors are eye-catching. But cute hipster Dumbo is nowhere to be found here.

As for Lyons (1848-1929), she was, per the Parks Dept. website, "an educator, civic leader, suffragist, and public speaker. She taught in Brooklyn public schools for 48 years and was the second Black woman to serve the Brooklyn school system as an assistant principal.

"Throughout her life, Lyons fought for women’s right to vote and was a member of the Colored Women’s Equal Suffrage League of Brooklyn. She died in 1929 in Brooklyn, leaving a legacy of advancing women’s rights and racial justice."

The site further explains that after her home was attacked during the 1863 Draft Riots, her family fled to New England. Her family sued to gain her admission to Providence High School. She became its first African American graduate.

That's courtesy of the Parks Department's Historical Signs Project, which does not seem to cover an older plaque also found here. It contains what was once a lesson in infrastructure history, specifically about the BQE. But time has flattened the raised lettering, rendering it hopelessly illegible.

Of course, if you're interested in the BQE, there's plenty of information on that great crumbling thread of noise and particulates online.

All photos except book cover image © Oren Hope

Susan Smith McKinney Steward Park

Dr. Susan Smith McKinney Steward (1847–1918) was the first licensed African-American female physician in New York State, specializing in prenatal care and childhood diseases. An obscure tract near the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway (BQE), formerly called Bridge Park II, has been redesigned and renamed Susan Smith McKinney Steward Park.

The park lies just behind the entrance to the F train. Yet this space is what you could call a relic of the construction of the BQE, which you can see arcing by in the background.

Bits of rounded brick wall remain where wooden fencing later went up, giving a weird patchwork-ruin effect. And a look skyward confirms that yes, you're still in good old NYC.

(For what it's worth, Amsterdam News and other sources noted that the $7.5 million reconstruction of the park was privately funded by Watchtower, the Jehovah's Witnesses organization that has a prominent presence nearby.)

McKinney Steward was a Weeksville (Crown Heights) native who grew up on her father's Brooklyn pig farm. (There are no more pig farms in Brooklyn, although I wouldn't be surprised if some hipster enterprise in Red Hook was keeping a live pig somewhere out back.)

The pioneering physician owned a practice from 1870 to 1895, with locations in Brooklyn and Manhattan. According to the Brooklyn Public Library, practicing medicine for her wasn't just about physical heath, "It was a means by which she could further elevate and impact the community she loved and fight for racial inclusion and women’s rights. During her life she founded clinics, clubs and suffragette groups."

McKinney Steward spent her later years as a faculty member and resident physician at Wilberforce University in Xenia, Ohio. But upon her death at age 71 she was buried back in Brooklyn, in Green-Wood Cemetery. W.E.B. Dubois delivered the eulogy.

She is an obvious choice for honoring and remembering with a park. To be honest, though, there's not really a whole lot in this one. I'm all for more safe places for kids to play outside...

...but what the neighborhood – which includes much public housing – needs more than a field of artificial turf is tree coverage. Here you find trees mostly on the fringes.

It wasn't clear from my reading how much of the planned reconstruction has already taken place. But the place is well manicured and looks finished. In two visits, one on a warm late-summer morning, the other on a pleasant weekend in April, only a few locals were taking advantage.

Sidle around a bend, though, and here's a surprise – a playground with giant whimsical overhanging leaf-things in the foreground.

Incidentally, Kaitlyn Greenidge's 2021 novel Libertie – designated variously a "notable" book, a "must read" and "best historical fiction" by the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Time – was inspired in part by the life of McKinney Steward.

The Times called the book "a feat of monumental thematic imagination."

I can't say the same for Susan Smith McKinney Steward Park. But there you have it. And in the next post, we venture under the BQE to find another little park named after another notable female African American New Yorker.

All photos except McKinney Steward portrait © Oren Hope