Gantry Plaza State Park is 12 acres (4.9 square hectares) state park that runs along the East River in the Hunters Point section of Long Island City, in Queens, NYC. The park is situated in the old manufacturing and dockyard area and is home to remnants of structures used before. The park’s most prominent feature is the collection of the gantry, which includes bridges connecting cars serviced by barges that transported freight railcars, which ran from Queens, NYC and Manhattan.
The park’s southern part was once docked and is home to the newly renovated “contained apron” transfer bridges built under the James B. French patent. They were built in 1925 to unload and take railway car floats to service industries in Long Island via the Long Island Rail Road’s North Shore Freight Branch, previously located on the south side of 48th Avenue (now part of Hunter’s Point Park). The northern portion of Gantry Plaza State Park was an old PepsiCo bottling plant that was ended in 1999. The branch that was used for freight was lower than street level and was refilled in the early part of 2000.
The park houses 120 feet length (37 meters) and 60 feet high (18 meters) cursive, neon-on-metal-red-colored Pepsi-Cola sign, created by the General Outdoor Advertising Company in 1939 and later renovated through Artkraft Strauss in 1993. It was erected near the top of the bottling plant before being removed and placed in a permanent location at the park entrance. The Pepsi-Cola sign was made as a New York City landmark on April 12, the 12th day of April 2016. Superb Junk Removal
The park first opened on May 28, 1998. The park was completed to the park in July 2009. The park will be constructed in phases by the Queens West Development Corporation. Thomas Balsley designed the original Gantry Plaza State Park section with Lee Weintraub, both New York City landscape architects, and Richard Sullivan, an architect. Stage 2 is the brand new, six-acre (2.4 acres) part of the park designed with the help of New York City landscape architecture firm Abel Bainnson Butz and the first section of Stage 2 was opened in July 2009. When completed, Gantry Plaza State Park will cover 40 acres (16 ha) in size.
In Popular Culture
- A brief overview of Gantry Plaza State Park is presented at nine and a half hours in the 1969 film directed by Olsen and the banden. The Olsen Gang in a Fix.
- The film Munich featured the park’s last scene that was shot in 2005. The pier and the Pepsi-Cola sign located in the north can be observed in this scene.
- The exact location was utilized. The exact location was also used as the location for The Interpreter. In the closing sequence, Nicole Kidman waves her goodbye to the role of Sean Penn, seated on the fence in front of Gantry Park. The Pepsi-Cola signboard in the bottling plant was prominently visible.
Check out other attractions like Moma PS1