Potamogeton Pond, a small

pond A pond is a small, still, land-based body of water formed by pooling inside a depression (geology), depression, either naturally or artificiality, artificially. A pond is smaller than a lake and there are no official criteria distinguishing ...

Queens Queens is the largest by area of the Boroughs of New York City, five boroughs of New York City, coextensive with Queens County, in the U.S. state of New York (state), New York. Located near the western end of Long Island, it is bordered by the ...

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

(historically also known as Pea Pond), is located on a narrow strip of parkland in Hollis Hills alongside

Grand Central Parkway The Grand Central Parkway (GCP) is a 14.61-mile (23.51 km) controlled-access parkway that stretches from the Triborough Bridge in New York City to the Queens– Nassau County line on Long Island. At the Nassau County line, it becomes t ...

and named after an

aquatic plant Aquatic plants, also referred to as hydrophytes, are vascular plants and Non-vascular plant, non-vascular plants that have adapted to live in aquatic ecosystem, aquatic environments (marine ecosystem, saltwater or freshwater ecosystem, freshwater ...

. It was once a stop on a bridle trail that connected

Cunningham Park Cunningham Park is a park in the New York City borough of Queens. The park lies between the Grand Central Parkway to the south and the Long Island Expressway, and is bifurcated by the Clearview Expressway. The park is operated by the New York Cit ...

Alley Pond Park Alley Pond Park is the second-largest public park in Queens, New York City, occupying . The park is bordered to the east by Douglaston, to the west by Bayside, to the north by Little Neck Bay, and to the south by Union Turnpike. The Cross I ...

; but when local stables closed, the trail became disused. The pond can be found at 86th Avenue and 217th Street. The completion of Grand Central Parkway reduced the amount of water that fed the pond, resulting in less water intake and converting the once popular ice-skating site to a bog. The perch, carp, and catfish that lived in the pond died off in 1963 as the parkway was widened in conjunction with the

world's fair A world's fair, also known as a universal exhibition, is a large global exhibition designed to showcase the achievements of nations. These exhibitions vary in character and are held in different parts of the world at a specific site for a perio ...

taking place in

Flushing Meadows Flushing may refer to: Places Netherlands * Flushing, Netherlands, an English name for the city of Vlissingen, Netherlands United Kingdom * Flushing, Cornwall, a village in Cornwall, England * The Flushing, a building in Suffolk, Englan ...

the following year.

Silt Silt is granular material of a size between sand and clay and composed mostly of broken grains of quartz. Silt may occur as a soil (often mixed with sand or clay) or as sediment mixed in suspension (chemistry), suspension with water. Silt usually ...

covered up the pond, and plants grew atop its former surface. Public awareness of the pond can be credited to the public-school science teacher Thomas F. Schweitzer and the

Queens College Queens College (QC) is a public college in the New York City borough of Queens. Part of the City University of New York system, Queens College occupies an campus primarily located in Flushing. Queens College was established in 1937 and offe ...

ecology professor Andrew C. Greller, who led tours of the pond site and founded organizations that advocated for its restoration. Schweitzer's Hollis Hills Civic Association teamed up with Greller's Queens College Ecology Club to lobby the city, which by 1970 determined that "the area known as Pea Pond ... no longer receives sufficient water to maintain a pond". Undeterred, advocates for the pond enlisted the support of the

Boy Scouts Boy Scouts or Boy Scout may refer to: * Members, sections or organisations in the Scouting Movement ** Scout (Scouting), a boy or a girl participating in the worldwide Scouting movement ** Scouting America, formerly known as Boy Scouts of America ...

, the Queens Village Centennial Association, and local high school nature clubs. Under the banner of the East Queens Ad Hoc Committee for a Natural Attitude Toward Urban Recreational Environment (NATURE), supporters succeeded in blocking the state and city's plans to cover the pond's site. The pond is presently overgrown with ''

Phragmites ''Phragmites'' () is a genus of four species of large perennial plant, perennial reed (plant), reed Poaceae, grasses found in wetlands throughout temperate and tropical regions of the world. Taxonomy The World Checklist of Selected Plant Famili ...

'' and

cattail ''Typha'' is a genus of about 30 species of monocotyledonous flowering plants in the family Typhaceae. These plants have a variety of common names, in British English as bulrushStreeter D, Hart-Davies C, Hardcastle A, Cole F, Harper L. 2009. ...

s. It fills up completely only after heavy rains. Entrances to the Potamogeton Pond Trail can be found on Grand Central Parkway at 217th Street and at 82nd Avenue.

References

External links

* Walsh, Kevin.
Potamogeton Pond
. ''Forgotten New York''. March 21, 2011.
Finding Aid for the Andrew Greller Papers
Queens College Libraries Special Collections and Archives, City University of New York.
Andrew Greller Digitized Scrapbooks
Queens College Libraries Special Collections and Archives, JSTOR Open Community Collections. {{New York City waterways Lakes of Queens, New York Ponds of New York (state) Parks in Queens, New York