Marsha P. Johnson State Park

The site of an old marine and shortline rail terminal on the East River, at the edge of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, became a state park in 2007. Thirteen years later the state renamed East River State Park in honor of transgender activist Marsha P. Johnson.

But there's been a lot of change here besides the name. An extremely outdated description at nyctourism.com says this: "East River State Park, otherwise known as the Williamsburg Waterfront, is not fancy: stage, concrete, water...Families can relax amongst historic rail yard remnants, and in the summer, take in family-friendly music and film series."

That doesn't remotely describe today's Marsha P. Johnson State Park, which abuts the unremarkable sports fields of Bushwick Inlet Park. It has some of the fancy trappings that go with our age of reckless real estate development and gentrification, but also exudes a neighborhood-y feel.

The big benefit of a park in this location is, of course, the waterfront.

In the upper left of the photo above there's a seaplane, on the way to Boston perhaps.

Waterfront aside, there's space here for both family fun and sleepy romance.

Remnants of the site's industrial past flowed together with spring flowers and chalked whimsy on a mid-May visit.

A little wooden train perhaps is meant to suggest the short trains that ran here from the waterfront to the lot or street where cargo could be taken up by vehicles for delivery or processing.

Jumbles of stones make good play spaces.

There's fun – and relaxation opportunities – aplenty in this quiet park.

The park's renaming occurred under the Andrew Cuomo administration in 2020. Signage here will tell you that Marsha P. Johnson (1945-1992) was a "Black gay and trans liberation activist, drag queen performer, actress, and sex worker [who]...struggled with mental illness" and lived with HIV/AIDS.

She "was known in the West Village for her charisma, joyfulness, and generosity, while living against great odds...Many called her a saint: Saint Marsha."

After the Stonewall uprising, where she was present, she "moved to the forefront of the Gay Liberation Movement." The "P" in her name, we are told, stood for a motto of hers, "Pay it no mind," which is written over her park's main entrance on Kent Ave.

Her body was found in the Hudson River in July of 1992. Uncertainty lingers over whether her death was a suicide or murder.

In recent years New York City has acted to belatedly honor African Americans by naming parks for them. New York State has taken steps in that direction too, and in this case with an African American who was also part of the LGBTQ+ community.

Along the same lines, In March 2024 present governor Kathy Hochul issued a proclamation declaring a Transgender Day of Visibility.

Netflix released a documentary about Johnson in 2017.

Hank O'Neal, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Marsha P. Johnson State Park carries only remnants of the site's industrial/commercial past, but history lives on all around Brooklyn. Consider these old stable doors on a nearby street.

And history is made by all kinds of people. Case in point: Marsha P. Johnson State Park.

All photos © Oren Hope except where noted

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

Manhattan Beach Park

I've been to Coney Island and Brighton Beach plenty of times over the decades – in the case of Coney, since I was a wee kid. Still I had never sojourned further east on that same peninsula to Brooklyn's Manhattan Beach Park. This lapse was finally remedied on Labor Day Sunday, thanks to Mrs. Odyssey who knew the lay of the land (and sea).

Far fewer folks hit Manhattan Beach than crowd its better-known neighbors, in part because this beach is a bit of a hike from the nearest subway station (Sheepshead Bay). But that's where the adventure begins, with a walk down lively Sheepshead Bay Road, ending up at Emmons Ave. which runs along the northern edge of Sheepshead Bay (the bay itself).

The bay is really more of a channel cut into the bottom of Brooklyn, frequented by water birds (including swans) and home to leisure craft and chartered fishing boats.

A long, clattering wooden footbridge clad in fading blue paint takes you across the bay to Manhattan Beach, the neighborhood.

The Hidden Waters Blog reports that the bridge has the rather funny-sounding distinction of being the "longest pedestrian-only bridge across a waterway that is inside a borough."

The same post has a drawing of a much more substantial bridge, never built. Probably the residents of the tony Manhattan Beach neighborhood wouldn't have welcomed Coney Island-sized crowds scrambling down its streets on the way to its beach. Manhattan Beach, I am told by a reliable source, is one of New York City's five most expensive neighborhoods.

The strand was sparsely populated although it was a warm late morning on Labor Day Weekend.

Few concessions had yet been conceded.

But slowly more people arrived.

By the time we left two hours later the lunchtime crowd at the picnic area had started to take on a festival atmosphere.

Walking through the park's eastern side back out towards the street, we encountered a tree that really, really wanted to be playing handball, a field of rocks that was a pure mystery, and a little boy hoping against hope to be hit by a tennis ball.

There's actually another, tiny beach even further out near the end of the peninsula called Kingsborough Beach, but it's restricted to the good people of Kingsborough Community College.

The sun got hotter and hotter as we headed back to town along Shore Boulevard Mall – also a Parks Department responsibility.

Signs on a building visible from the elevated subway station broadcast the multiethnic nature of Sheepshead Bay. A Russian tailor, a Turkish Hair Salon, and a law firm with Italian roots doing business in English and Spanish.

Finally: To partake of that festival atmosphere I mentioned from the comfort of your domicile, please enjoy John Philip Sousa's "Manhattan Beach March."