Cooper Park

Before you stands a green space that looks like a standard neighborhood park, but its soil holds the remnants of a very different past. This six point four acre site once operated as a bustling glue factory owned by the nineteenth century inventor and industrialist Peter Cooper. In the late eighteen thirties, Cooper moved his manufacturing operations to this specific spot on Maspeth Avenue to take advantage of its strategic access to roads, ferries, and the wider trade networks of Brooklyn. For decades, the air here was thick with the scent of industrial production rather than the sounds of the basketball and handball courts you see today.