Parks
Parks consist of Kolbert Park and the Rachel Haber Cohen Playground and adjacent handball and basketball courts, near Edward R. Murrow High School, and the track and playing fields of Brooklyn College and Midwood High School. Local Yeshiva boys often play basketball during lunch breaks at Kolbert Park. Kolbert is also very popular with many Russian male Seniors who can be seen heavily engaged in daily board games such as Chess. Long-time and past residents alike still refer to Kolbert Park as simply "Avenue L Park." Another park is "Friends Field" at East Second Street and Avenue L. The park is popular with baseball-playing Yeshiva boys on Friday afternoons. "Friends Field" features Baseball Diamonds and Tennis Courts. Just opposite Friends Field along McDonald Avenue is the Erasmus Hall High School Football Field (Closed to the public when not in use). The Sprawling Square block-long Midwood High School Field (East 16th–17th Street at Avenues K-L) features handball courts, tennis courts, a runners track and a field used for football, rugby and soccer. It is quite visible to passengers on the adjacent BMT Subway line. NYPD-FDNY Charity Sporting Games, as well as NY-based Daytime TV "Soap Opera" Cast Baseball Games are often held there- (The studios used for CBS TV's "As The World Turns" is nearby). Annual NYC Public School JV Varsity Football Championship and Playoff Games are held there as well. Students from adjacent Edward R. Murrow High School also use the field during school hours. For historical purposes, in 1977, Current Borough President Marty Markowitz ("Mr. Brooklyn"), (then known as State Senator Markowitz), and other pols began the Annual "Midwood Field Concerts" Series at the Midwood High School Field. The concert series was later moved to its present home at Asser Levy Park (along Sea Breeze Avenue) in Brighton Beach (opposite the NY Aquarium), and is these days is known as the "Seaside Summer Concert Series" (held Thursday evening's July and August of each year).
There are two popular public pedestrian "rest" spots within the community. The first is 'Corporal Wiltshire Square', named in Honor of Corporal Clifford T. Wiltshire, located at the intersection of Ocean Avenue where it merges with Ave. 'P' and Kings Highway. The other is 'Sgt. Joyce Kilmer Triangle', located at the crossroads of Kings Highway and Quentin Road (E. 12th–13th Streets), so named in honor of American journalist and poet Sgt. Joyce Kilmer (1866–1918). Kilmer is a second cousin of American Actor Val Kilmer.
Read more about this topic: Midwood, Brooklyn
Famous quotes containing the word parks:
“Towns are full of people, houses full of tenants, hotels full of guests, trains full of travelers, cafés full of customers, parks full of promenaders, consulting-rooms of famous doctors full of patients, theatres full of spectators, and beaches full of bathers. What previously was, in general, no problem, now begins to be an everyday one, namely, to find room.”
—José Ortega Y Gasset (1883–1955)
“Perhaps our own woods and fields,—in the best wooded towns, where we need not quarrel about the huckleberries,—with the primitive swamps scattered here and there in their midst, but not prevailing over them, are the perfection of parks and groves, gardens, arbors, paths, vistas, and landscapes. They are the natural consequence of what art and refinement we as a people have.... Or, I would rather say, such were our groves twenty years ago.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)