Retirement Home Lets NYC's Playground Animals Grow Old

FLUSHING, QUEENS — Instead of spending their golden years in Florida, a handful of the city’s “hardest-working” concrete employees are retiring to Queens this fall at the city’s first-ever retirement home for playground animals.

The concrete creatures in question, which include an aardvark, frog, camel, and two dolphins, were well-loved fixtures of playgrounds across the five boroughs for decades, but until recently they’ve been living in storage during playground renovations, as The Brooklyn Paper first reported in March.

That’ll change this fall, when the crumbling, chipped animals will retire in a grove-turned concrete animal retirement community in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park — aptly dubbed “NYC Parks Home for Retired Playground Animals,” by the city’s parks department.

Although details about the retirement site are still under review by local community boards, NYC Parks Commissioner Mitchell J. Silver says the grove “will be a contemplative space where New Yorkers can visit these concrete creatures to enjoy a moment of nostalgia and salute some of NYC’s hardest working public servants.”

He added that the space will include benches and pathways, from which visitors can see — but not climb on! — the animals, which won’t be repainted or touched up, as a way of showcasing their “decades of service” at the hands of thousands of park-going children.

News of the plan was first alluded to at a community board meeting in March, when a Parks Department landscape architect suggested moving a concrete owl and whale amid renovations at two Bay Ridge playgrounds, reported The Brooklyn Paper.

Although details of the move weren’t made clear at the time — and drew push back from community members, who were attached to the sculptures — the Parks Department said they were “looking into relocating these pieces.”

Now, it appears that five of the concrete animals will be relocated to Queens — and dozens of others might join later, too.

All in all, there are “hundreds” of animal sculptures across the city, according to Adrian Benepe, a former New York City Parks commissioner who previously worked under Commissioner Henry Stern — the late Commissioner of 15 years who had an eccentric, and well-funded, obsession with animals in the city’s parks.

Benepe told The Brooklyn Paper that the animal art is connected to one of Stern’s hobbies “which was observing animals in architectural ornaments,” so much so that Stern mandated the inclusion of at least one animal-themed structure at every playground that was renovated or built under his leadership.

While Stern’s legacy lives on at many of the city’s animal-themed playgrounds — including Dinosaur and Hippo Playgrounds, to name a few — it’ll also continue at the new animal-themed retirement home, where many sculptures “will get their place in the sun,” according to Silver.