Hunter's Point South Park Playground

The playground you are approaching occupies land that was once entirely industrial, defined by freight yards and abandoned sugar refineries. In the mid-nineteenth century, developers created this stretch of the peninsula by bulldozing an entire hill into the East River to expand the available waterfront for factories. For decades, the site remained a shuttered, post-industrial relic until city planners reimagined it as a resilient public landscape that officially opened in two major stages starting in twenty thirteen.