Doughboy Park is a New York City public park in the

Woodside Woodside may refer to: Places and buildings Australia * Woodside, South Australia, a town * Woodside, Victoria, a town Canada * Woodside National Historic Site, the boyhood home of William Lyon Mackenzie King *Woodside, Nova Scotia, a neighbo ...

neighborhood of

Queens Queens is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Queens County, in the U.S. state of New York. Located on Long Island, it is the largest New York City borough by area. It is bordered by the borough of Brooklyn at the western tip of Long ...

. It is located on a hilly parcel of land between Skillman Avenue and Woodside Avenue, and between 54th Street and 56th Street. The park land was originally obtained by the city as a play area for local school P.S. 11 in 1893.Doughboy Park
/ref> During the

First World War World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...

, local soldiers met here before shipping off to the front in Europe. A memorial was commissioned by the Woodside Community Council for these soldiers, including ten who were killed during the war. The memorial was dedicated on

Memorial Day Memorial Day (originally known as Decoration Day) is a federal holiday in the United States for mourning the U.S. military personnel who have fought and died while serving in the United States armed forces. It is observed on the last Monda ...

, 30 May 1923. It features a statue of a somber, wounded American infantryman, colloquially called a

doughboy Doughboy was a popular nickname for the American infantryman during World War I. Though the origins of the term are not certain, the nickname was still in use as of the early 1940s. Examples include the 1942 song "Johnny Doughboy Found a Rose i ...

. The bronze statue was created by

Flushing, Queens Flushing is a neighborhood in the north-central portion of the New York City borough of Queens. The neighborhood is the fourth-largest central business district in New York City. Downtown Flushing is a major commercial and retail area, and the i ...

based sculptor

Burt Johnson Burt William Johnson (April 25, 1890 – March 27, 1927)Moore, Nancy Dustin Wall. ''Dictionary of Art and Artists in Southern California Before 1930''. Los Angeles: Privately printed, 1975, p.130 was an American sculptor. Biography Johnson was ...

, who also designed another doughboy statue in DeWitt Clinton Park in Manhattan. The statue was selected as the best memorial of its kind in 1928 by the American Federation of Artists.Windmuller Playground Highlights - Woodside Doughboy Statue
/ref> The terrain of the park was considered too steep for children to play on, and in 1957 the land was turned over to the

New York City Department of Parks and Recreation The New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, also called the Parks Department or NYC Parks, is the department of the government of New York City responsible for maintaining the city's parks system, preserving and maintaining the ecolo ...

. In 1959, the section of 54th Street between 39th Drive and Woodside Avenue was removed and converted to parkland, connecting the park to the adjacent Windmuller Park. Seating, paths, and trees were later installed in the park, and in 1971 the park was given its current name. A conservation project in 1990 restored the statue, and multiple upgrades to the park have maintained the park. Also during the 1990 renovations, the park gained another prominent feature: an accurately oriented compass rose embedded in the pavement, annotated with the names of the ancient Greek wind gods (the Anemoi). Since the installation of the statue in 1923, the park has been the location of local

observances and other patriotic events. In 2006, on the fifth anniversary of the

September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commerc ...

, a memorial plaque in the park was dedicated. It reads: In 2017, it was announced that Doughboy Plaza's seating area and 9/11 memorial would be rebuilt at a cost of $750,000. The project budget was later doubled, and the reconstruction was approved in early 2018. The project would be completed by 2020.

References

{{Protected areas of New York City Parks in Queens, New York Woodside, Queens 1957 establishments in New York City Memorials for the September 11 attacks