Claremont Park - Bronx NY - Living New Deal

City:: Bronx, New York City, NY
Site Type:: Parks and Recreation, Tennis Courts, Swimming Pools
New Deal Agencies:: Work Relief Programs, Works Progress Administration (WPA)
Completed:: 1940

Description

The 17-acre Claremont Park in the Bronx was extensively renovated and improved in 1940 by the Works Progress Administration. The renovated park opened on December 7, 1940. A press release from opening day describes WPA work in the park:

“This park has been redesigned by the Department of Parks and constructed by the Work Projects Administration to provide wider year round usage for all ages and groups of citizens of the surrounding community. Besides three new children’s playgrounds which were opened on September 14 of this year, the old playground at the East 170 Street end of the park has been enlarged and provided with shuffleboard, volleyball and handball courts, a wading pool and play apparatus. There are also two large open play areas, one containing two softball diamonds and the other a softball diamond, basketball and volleyball courts, the surfaces of which can be used for roller and iceskating. Encircling this latter area is a one quarter mile bituminous surfaced bicycle and roller skating track. The balance of the park has been landscaped and provided with wide walks, benches and broad sloping lawns.” (Quoted at www.kermitproject.org)

Source notes

https://www.kermitproject.org/bronx/newdeal/iacp00.html

Site originally submitted by Frank da Cruz on July 9, 2014.

Location Info

Claremont Park
Bronx, NY 10456
Bronx County

Coordinates: 40.8405022, -73.90748

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One comment on “Claremont Park – Bronx NY”

Barbara Nusgarten Dreier February 6, 2017

I all but LIVED in Claremont Park. It was just few blocks from our apt. house on Grant Avenue. We’d go there to play on the swings and sliding pond( but never in the sandbox) and have more fun than kids should be allowed to do. Later on–I smoked my first cigarette there (GASP!) and had mom known, she would have been very upset. There was a row of private houses just across the street from the Morris Avenue entrance…and once I got to know the owners of one of the houses: Grace and Freddie–they offered me a job in their day care/preschool which was housed in their school./home. We became good friends and I adored working with the children. After work, I’d go home for lunch, then downtown on the subway to work at Metropolitan Life, Ins. Co., in Manhattan, then off back uptown to Hunter college–night school.
Exhausting to think of this now–but then, I was only 15 !! I’d love to go back to the park someday and relive old times and memories.

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One comment on “Claremont Park – Bronx NY”

Barbara Nusgarten Dreier February 6, 2017

I all but LIVED in Claremont Park. It was just few blocks from our apt. house on Grant Avenue. We’d go there to play on the swings and sliding pond( but never in the sandbox) and have more fun than kids should be allowed to do. Later on–I smoked my first cigarette there (GASP!) and had mom known, she would have been very upset. There was a row of private houses just across the street from the Morris Avenue entrance…and once I got to know the owners of one of the houses: Grace and Freddie–they offered me a job in their day care/preschool which was housed in their school./home. We became good friends and I adored working with the children. After work, I’d go home for lunch, then downtown on the subway to work at Metropolitan Life, Ins. Co., in Manhattan, then off back uptown to Hunter college–night school.
Exhausting to think of this now–but then, I was only 15 !! I’d love to go back to the park someday and relive old times and memories.