Marine Park Tutors Come To You

Up until 1948, art was a class of competition in the summer Olympics. (Who knew?) Entries were accepted within several subcategories—sculpture, literature, painting, music, and even town-planning design—but had to be related to sports and athleticism.

In 1936, Charles Downing Lay, a Columbia University and Harvard University-educated landscape architect won a silver medal at the 11th Olympiad in Berlin for his elaborate plan of “Marine Brooklyn Park,” located in the neighborhood of Marine Park, which edged the western-most inlet of Jamaica Bay (some sources refer to “Brooklyn Marine Park”). Lay, who designed or influenced the design of countless private estates, gardens, subdivisions, and parks, especially on the East Coast, wanted the park to be the largest urban playground in the world, “a park for the people of Brooklyn and all New York that shall be as beautiful as any private estate and finer than any park of its kind yet built.”

Lay had an even loftier goal for the park: he wanted it to compete with Coney Island, luring its visitors with a promise of healthful and uplifting exercise, fresh air, and self-improvement, superior to Coney Island’s purported immoral pleasures. Land for the park would first be reshaped with artificial canals, making room for yachts, pleasure boats, and racing boats and providing swimming areas. In addition, the 1,800-acre park would include

– Bathing pavilions for 12,000 people
– Three outdoor swimming and wading pools
– A skating rink
– An eighteen-hole golf course
– 200 tennis courts
– Eighty baseball diamonds,
– Bowling greens
– Bocce ball areas
– Picnic areas
– Croquet
– Lacrosse
– A zoo
– Thirty restaurants and cafeterias
– A 1,000-seat casino surrounded by formal gardens
– An open-air concert area accommodating 30,000 patrons
– The largest football stadium in America, seating 125,000 spectators
– Thirty miles of walkways and nine miles of buses to promote easy access

The enormous plan was never completed due to corruption charges aimed at Mayor James Walker and his administration. Construction at the park, which involved 5,400 workers, became a sore point and symbol of waste—one which new mayor Fiorello LaGuardia and newly appointed commissioner of the parks department Robert Moses decried in their platform to improve New York City.

Today, all that is left of the plan are wood pilings in and near the bay. And although the demise of the original concept disappointed some people, it certainly allowed for the preservation of the park’s natural tidal landscape. The city adopted a less-invasive park scheme that preserved and restored the salt marshes—an inherent component of the neighborhood of Marine Park, Brooklyn.

The history of the neighborhood of Marine Park is an interesting one, full of brilliant minds, ambition, power, and political forces. A Marine Park tutor can shed light on the interplay between these forces for local students studying regional history. In fact, arranging for tutoring in Marine Park is one of the best ways to enhance learning at all ages.