History of Marine Park

In the early 1900s developers began making elaborate plans to turn Jamaica Bay into a port, dredging the Rockaway channel to allow large ships to enter the proposed harbor. Speculators anticipated a real estate boom and bought land along the Jamaica Bay waterfront. Fearing that the relatively pristine marshland around Gerritsen Creek would be destroyed, philanthropists Frederick B. Pratt and Alfred T. White gifted the city 150 acres in the area for use as a park in 1917. After a seven-year delay, the City accepted their offer and began to design what would become Marine Park. The prospect of a new park inspired developers to erect new homes in the area, although park improvements were slow to follow.