Gantry Plaza State Park is 12 acres (4.9 square hectare) state park along the East River in the Hunters Point section of Long Island City, in Queens, New York City. The park is located within an old dockyard and manufacturing district and has remnants of buildings from the past the region. The park’s most notable feature is the gantry collection with bridges that float cars serviced by barges transporting freight railcars between Queens and Manhattan.
The park’s southern section was once a dock area and features renovated “contained apron” transfer bridges from the James B. French patent. They were constructed in 1925 to unload and load railway car floats used to serve industries located 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 part of Gantry Plaza State Park was an old PepsiCo bottling facility that shut down in 1999. This branch for freight was below street level, and it was filled up at the beginning of 2000.
The park is home to a 120-foot long (37 meters) 60-foot high (18 meters) cursive, red-colored neon-on-metal Pepsi-Cola signage, made through the General Outdoor Advertising Company in 1939 and then rebuilt by Artkraft Strauss in 1993. It was placed at the top of the bottling facility before being removed and put in a permanent spot within the park in 2009. The sign for Pepsi-Cola was declared a New York City landmark on April 12 on the 12th of April, 2016.
The park opened its doors in May 1998. It was added in July of 2009. According to the Queens West Development Corporation, this park in Queens, NYC, will be built in stages. Thomas Balsley designed the original section of Gantry Plaza State Park with Lee Weintraub, both New York City landscape architects, and Richard Sullivan, an architect. Stage 2 is the brand new, 6 acres (2.4 acres) portion of the park created by New York City landscape architecture firm Abel Bainnson Butz, and the initial phase of Stage 2 was opened in July of 2009. Once completed, Gantry Plaza State Park is anticipated to cover forty acres (16 ha) in area.
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, shot in 2005. The pier and the Pepsi-Cola sign in the north can be seen in this scene. EZ Bed Bugs Exterminator Queens
- The exact place was used. The same location was used in The Interpreter. In the last sequence, Nicole Kidman waves her goodbyes to her character Sean Penn who is seated on the fence near Gantry Park. The Pepsi-Cola signboard at the former bottling facility is also visible.
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