I visited Fort Totten Park, an NYC 'hidden treasure' with a Civil War-era fortress and abandoned buildings that have been reclaimed by nature
- Fort Totten Park is in Queens, New York. It stations military groups and city agencies, and it gives the public space to get outside.
- Located on a peninsula in Queens' Bayside neighborhood, the park is named after the Civil War-era fort that is tucked away behind the visitor's center.
- Visitors can't access the fort right now because of the coronavirus pandemic, but the park itself is open.
- I visited Fort Totten Park in October 2020 and found that while some areas looked modern and well-kept, others had been completely reclaimed by nature.
- I thought the park was hauntingly beautiful and felt it was a safe and unique way to get outside during the coronavirus pandemic.
Lindsay Jurgielewicz lived in Queens for seven years before she heard about the historic Civil War-era fort in the NYC borough's Bayside neighborhood.
As an Urban Park Ranger, her job is to connect New Yorkers to the natural world around them through educational programming. During her first year as a ranger, she was stationed at Fort Totten.
"My first day on the job was my very first time in that park," she told Insider.
On that day, Jurgielewicz's colleagues took her on a private tour of the fort. She said she was really surprised and impressed.
"I had no idea it was here," she told Insider. "We had the whole thing to ourselves and got to explore how large it is and move through the natural areas," she added.
Jurgielewicz said the park's Civil War relic is a "hidden treasure."
"Even if you know about it, you have to come right up to it to get the real feel of it," she said.
When I visited the park in October 2020, the fortress wasn't accessible due to the pandemic. But I felt that the park itself was still worth the visit to see its massive abandoned structures that have been reclaimed by nature.
If you're going to explore the outdoors during the coronavirus pandemic, the CDC suggests that you bring tissues, hand sanitizer with at least 60% alcohol, and a mask for when you're around others.
Welcome to Fort Totten Park, a 60-acre outdoor recreation area that is home to a preserved Civil War-era fortress.
The park is in Queens, one of New York City's five boroughs.
It took me a train and two bus rides — and about two hours — to reach the park from my apartment in Brooklyn.
I took the J train to the Q31 bus to the Q13 bus and got off at Fort Totten Park.
When I got off the bus, there was no fort in sight — just gates with the attraction's name.
The first thing you'll see when you get off the bus is the water to your left and the gates to the park in front of you.
A pair of mines from the fort sit on top of the gates, Jurgielewicz told Insider.
That's because the fort, known as a water battery, is tucked away at the back left corner of the park behind the visitor's center.
You need to be with an Urban Park Ranger to access the water battery.
While the park is historic, it's currently used by the US Army and a mix of city agencies, Jurgielewicz told Insider.
Once through the gates, there are several old buildings sitting on rolling lawns, some of which are being used by military groups and city agencies.
If you keep left at the entrance and walk back about a half-mile, turning right on Abbot Road and left on North Loop, you'll reach an overgrown area with a stone mass peaking through the trees.
There's fencing blocking visitors from the structure.
If you walk up to the fenced-in, overgrown area, you can get a peek of the massive structure.
Jurgielewicz said much of the property has been reclaimed by nature. "It's kind of a neat mix," she told Insider. "We're in this old manmade structure, but we also get a lot of wildlife down there."
The area leading up to the fence is overrun with nature, so I followed a pathway through the lush field.
Jurgielewicz said that rangers have seen eagles, foxes, and red-tailed hawks around the property.
Jurgielewicz said much of the park is overgrown because of a lack of funding.
"I know that there are a lot of groups that would love to be able to restore everything in the park," she said.
If you follow the fence to your right, you'll find the Fort Totten Visitors' Center, where you'd normally access the fort.
"The visitor center is in one of the historic court buildings where the military worked on stuff like torpedoes and mines," Jurgielewicz said.
Right now, the area is closed because of the coronavirus pandemic. So we asked Jurgielewicz to describe what it's like inside.
"We hope to have it open again soon in the future," Jurgielewicz said.
When the fort is open, she said park rangers take patrons through a tunnel and that leads from the visitor's center to the water battery.
The tunnel is known as the transport tunnel, she said.
"The big stone fort is the showstopper of the park," Jurgielewicz told Insider.
The stone walls are several feet thick, she said.
You'll see lots of arches where cannons were placed. These are known as casemates.
Each of the case mates has an opening for a cannon that now serves as a window.
"If you look through all these windows, you'll get a nice view," she added.
If the fort were open, you could go up to the second floor for more views of the park.
Jurgielewicz said that the fort was supposed to be a pentagon and several stories tall, but the technology of the structure had grown obsolete before it was finished.
"It's unfinished in that sense, but was a functional place where troops were trained for a long time," she told Insider. "It's a place of technological discovery in-action."
Jurgielewicz said visitors, even locals, typically say they had no idea the fort existed before seeing it in-person.
"You can't see it from the street," Jurgielewicz told Insider. "You really have to go all the way back there to find it, and so I know that people can be really surprised that we have this heavy Civil War-era era fort back here."
While the fort is currently inaccessible, the rest of the park is open to the public, and there's much to see, like an overgrown baseball field that used to be a mortar battery.
Battery King was the name of the mortar battery where eight cannons could fire at off-shore targets. The project was completed in 1900 and deactivated in 1935, according to NYC Parks.
Today, the field's grass is a little tall for a game of baseball.
The fencing surrounding the field has been reclaimed by nature, too.
Throughout the park, you'll find massive abandoned buildings that have been overrun by nature.
This building and two others just like it provided housing for 133 soldiers in the 20th century, according to NYC Parks.
This building was the last multi-story brick barrack built in the park and was used to house soldiers.
While the area was once landscaped to meet the needs of the fort, Jurgielewicz said most of the growth happening here today is natural.
Jurgielewicz told Insider that she hasn't been inside any of these buildings for safety reasons.
Jurgielewicz explained that many of the buildings aren't structurally sound, deeming them unsafe to explore.
You can view these beautifully eerie structures from behind a fence. These buildings felt like something out of a post-apocalyptic movie.
From the distressed rooftops to the shattered windows to the growing vines, I found the abandoned buildings to be hauntingly beautiful.
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