Alongside the narrow mouth of Coney Island Creek and the expanse of Gravesend Bay, Calvert Vaux Park is named for the English-born architect who teamed up with Frederick Law Olmsted for the designs of Central and Prospect Parks. Long overshadowed by Olmsted, whose sons carried the family name and profession of landscape architecture into the twentieth century, Vaux has been undersung. (His mysterious death, in which he seems to have taken a long walk on a short pier into the bay, didn’t help.) The park had been originally named Dreier Offerman, after the home for unwed mothers once on site. The flat fields, marked with baseball diamonds and soccer pitches, had a melancholy feel. A lot of this was built from fill from the construction of the Verrazano Narrows Bridge. There was an impromptu memorial for a member of a… radio-controlled helicopter club which was, thankfully, the only sign of this adolescent pastime. This old press release about plans for the park was, typically, rather more optimistic than the current reality. For instance, the comfort station (that old Victorianism) is still under construction.
Backyard and Beyond 
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