Gantry Plaza State Park is an area of 12 acres (4.9 square hectares) state park located on the East River in the Hunters Point section of Long Island City, in Queens, New York. The park is situated within an old dockyard and manufacturing area and has remnants of buildings from the past. The park’s main attraction is an array of gantries that have car float bridges for transfer, which were then connected by barges that transported freight railcars that ran between Queens, NYC in Queens, and Manhattan.
The southern section of the park was a former dock and is home to the renovated “contained apron” transfer bridges that were part of the James B. French patent. These bridges were constructed in 1925 to unload and load rail car floats which served industries on Long Island via the Long Island Rail Road’s North Shore Freight Branch, which was once located on the south end of 48th Avenue (now part of Hunter’s Point Park). The northern section of Gantry Plaza State Park was part of the former PepsiCo bottling plant, which closed in 1999. This branch for freight was situated below street level and was filled up at the beginning of 2000.
The park has a 120-foot-long (37 meters) 60-foot high (18 18) cursive, ruby-colored neon-on-metal Pepsi-Cola signage, made in 1939 by the General Outdoor Advertising Company 1939. Artkraft Strauss rebuilt it in 1993. It was placed at the top of the bottling facility before being removed and then reassembled in a permanent spot within the park in 2009. The Pepsi-Cola sign became a New York City landmark on April 12 on the 12th of April, 2016.
The park was first inaugurated in May 1998 and added in July 2009. According to the Queens West Development Corporation, it is currently being built in stages. Thomas Balsley designed the original section of Gantry Plaza State Park with Lee Weintraub, both New York City landscape architects, along with Richard Sullivan, an architect. Stage 2, the new 6-acre (2.4 acres) area of the park, was created by New York City landscape architecture firm Abel Bainnson Butz and the initial phase of Stage 2 was opened for public viewing in July 2009. Gantry Plaza State Park is anticipated to cover 40 acres (16 ha) when completed.
In Popular Culture
- An overview of Gantry Plaza State Park is shown at the time of one hour and nine minutes in the film 1969 by Olsen and the banden. The Olsen Gang in a Fix.
- The film Munich used the park’s final scene, which was shot in 2005. The pier, as well as the Pepsi-Cola sign that is located to its north, are visible in the background. Queens Electrician
- The exact place was used. The same location was used in The Interpreter. In the closing sequence, Nicole Kidman waves her goodbyes to her character Sean Penn who sits on the fence near Gantry Park. The Pepsi-Cola signboard at the former bottling facility is also visible during the sequence.
Look into other neighborhoods, such as Moma Ps1
