Doughboy Park

There are lots of “doughboy parks” in New York City – parks with memorials to the young Americans who fought in World War I. Nine of them, according to the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation, including those at DeWitt Clinton Park and Abingdon Square. But only one is actually called Doughboy Park (the name Doughboy Plaza is also used), and if any place deserves the name, it’s this former WWI mustering ground in Woodside, Queens.

The monument itself features Burt W. Johnson’s sculpture of a soldier standing in a peaceful, almost devotional pose that’s unusual for this sort of statue. In my opinion it’s more affecting than the more active poses of other doughboy memorials.

Dedicated in 1923, the memorial has since acquired a very specific character, with a list (added in 2006) of the soldiers from the neighborhood who died in the Great War. According to the Parks Department, the American Federation of Arts named the Woodside Doughboy (originally called the Returning Soldier) the century’s best war memorial of its kind, and community members still gather here every Memorial Day.

Doughboy Park is adjacent to P.S. 11 and was originally a play area for the school, but after being judged too steep it became a city park. That doesn’t keep kids out, though, especially for an Easter egg hunt on Easter Sunday.

Aside from the somber doughboy himself, the park’s most striking feature is a large brick compass rose annotated with the names of the ancient Greek wind gods (the Anemoi), including my favorite, Zephyrus. Which Greek wind god is your favorite?

I love the design impulse behind features like that. It’s rare today. A Google Maps image shows that the points of the compass in fact do indicate north, south, east and west.

Getting a different kind of direction was a group of costumed young people rehearsing or videoing a performance of some kind.

One corner of the park hints at natural landscape and even wilderness. Cutting through this undeveloped area is a dirt trail that drew me inexorably along it as if I were hiking through the woods, even though it doesn’t really go anywhere at all.

DeWitt Clinton Park

How could I not go to a park on the first full day of spring? Never mind the snow cover from the previous night. Winter encroached much too far into spring this year, but that wasn't going to keep me away from DeWitt Clinton Park. This West Side spot is the latest in a series of Manhattan parks I have learned about after naïvely concluding that I had visited every park in the borough.

The playground was deserted, no surprise on this chilly, wettish day. But that made the outcropping of Manhattan schist all the more prominent.

Striking in a different way was the athletic field, where a couple of intrepid soccer players refused to wait for the grass to reappear, and the baseball diamond, where practice had already begun.

Dogs, too, didn't mind the cold ground. A pack of small pooches squabbled at the entrance to the dog run.

The plaza on the east side of the park where humans sit during nicer weather was quite deserted, though.

And Maria Clinton's Perennial Garden awaited warmer days.

Maria Franklin married DeWitt Clinton in 1796, before DeWitt became a Senator, Governor of New York, and the driving force behind the construction of the Erie Canal. I assume the garden is named for her, and not for any of the myriad modern-day Maria Clintons I can find on Facebook.

DeWitt Clinton Park also has one of the nine doughboy statues who stand guard over New York City's parks. The Clinton District Association commissioned the Clinton War Memorial, with a statue sculpted by Burt W. Johnson, to commemorate the neighborhood's World War One dead. It was dedicated in 1930.

What's this? I don't know. The easiest maze in the world? (There's only one path you can take to the center.)

Giant burls like the one on this otherwise unremarkable plane tree always catch my eye. I guess it's just interesting to note how the stoic tree doesn't seem to mind at all.

Nearby are the Clinton Park Stables, where the Central Park carriage horses are kept. I don't know whether these equines were heading home or just out for a walk. Whatever the circumstances, they did offer a reminder of the New York City of old.