Queens Village’s Wayanda Park
A Historic Playground And Forgotten Potter’s Field Is Getting Its Due

By Shams Tarek

When construction crews started digging up the playground at Wayanda Park in September 2002 for renovation, they unearthed an unexpected surprise — human bones.

Construction was halted instantly and the half century-old local neighborhood group named after the park, the Wayanda Civic Association, went into action.

As an anthropologist from the Medical Examiner’s office studies the bones, and the renovation of the park continues, the people at Wayanda are hoping to get some official recognition for what is a former potter’s field with countless, nameless people buried below its surface.

A description of the park from 1872, according to the Parks Department, called it “desolate… with no tombstones.” 

The tombstones never came, but neighborhood residents looking for some kind of recognition of the bodies buried there convinced the city to designate the land for use as a public park in 1908.

The breezy patch of green at Hollis Avenue and Robard Lane was known as Pauper Burial Ground until 1912, according to the Parks Department, when the first Queens Parks Department commissioner, W.G. Eliot, changed its name to Wayanda Park.

The name Wayanda is a Native American word for “The Place Of Happy Hearts,” according to the Parks Department, a direct reference to its longtime use as a burial ground.

It’s not known how many drifters, derelicts, blacks and other people on the fringes of society were buried in the park, though its soil goes over 280 feet deep and bodies are thought to be scattered throughout it entirely.

Native Americans are thought to make up a large part of the people buried there; according to the Parks Department, the Jameco people—who also contributed their name to the entire village of Jamaica—originally occupied the land where the park now sits.

When Wayanda Park opened in 1912, it had only benches and tennis courts to supplement its grassy plots and flagpole.

Parks commissioner Robert Moses had the park renovated in 1950, with the construction of a comfort station, sand pits, handball courts, a softball field and playground equipment.

The comfort station was reconstructed with $412,000 allocated by Councilman Archie Spigner in 1999; a more recent allocation from Spigner’s successor, Leroy Comrie, has allowed another round of renovations.

While the latest renovations were paused after the body was discovered, they resumed this March.

Lighting along the park’s circular path was installed, making the park bright and safe, even at night.  New playground equipment is being installed, and the basketball courts are being renovated.  Handball courts are being renovated, too.

While digging up Wayanda Park during renovations, workers found scores of dead bodies, reminding the community of the park’s legacy as a pauper grave. PRESS Photo By Shams Tarek

A new sprinkler system is also being installed, as are cobblestones for the Hollis Avenue sidewalk along the park.

But the biggest improvement for the park will be a big rock.

Cynthia Curtin, president of the Wayanda Civic Association and the park’s most active supporter, is meeting with Comrie this week to show him proposals for a three-by-five-foot granite memorial honoring the people buried in the park.

Curtin is hoping the memorial will be installed before the school year starts, so when the students of the adjacent P.S. 34 return to school, they’ll have a history lesson in their neighborhood.

“It’s the most historic park in our village,” Curtin said.  “There’s real history here, there’s real meaning.”

The memorial would go in a small, unidentified patch of grass between the school and the park, Curtin said, where the Parks Department buried all the bodies it found when it took over the land early last century.

The stone would be dedicated to all the park’s longtime “residents” in general, Curtin said, though the organization is flirting with the idea of mentioning the five names it does know, including a Civil War veteran and a man who hung himself.

While Curtin and other Wayanda supporters work on the parks’ memorial and renovation, they’re also working on a more immediate project.

The Civic Association and Comrie are hosting a “Family Day” in the park in August, meant more for fun and enjoyment than a history lesson or somber recognition.

The day-long event will feature clowns, games, local musicians and arts and crafts.

And after the clowns are gone and the music stops playing, Curtin and her group will return to working on a chronic (but she says harmless) problem at the park—teenagers and other young people hanging out there after dark—and on educating the community about what secrets are buried beneath its surface.

“I would love everyone in the village to know about the history of the park,” Curtin said.

And while she says “we’re doing our best to keep Wayanda alive,” Curtin insists there are no ghosts or spirits floating around the park.

“No one’s seen anything floating around,” Curtin said. “If anything there are good spirits there. Good hauntings, if any.”

The names of a very few people interred in the Burying Ground are known; these are recovered from scattered pres notices of the 90’s:

• John Kempel, murdered his wife in Jamaica. Buried in Potter’s Field September 1881.

• Louisa Walters, February 1892.

• The body of a man found lying alongside the fence surrounding Dexter Park on June 2 was not identified and the remains were buried in Potter’s Field at Queens on June 7... later identified as John E. Ottalono of Winfield, June 1897.

• Williams Brandes, a German, 35, of 1098 Atlantic Avenue, Brooklyn. He committed suicide on June 15, and was buried at Potter’s Field in 1897.

• Terrence Hartford, Civil War veteran. According to the late John Collison, he drifted in to Queens Village when it was still a farming community and worked as a farm hand. He was without a home or relatives and at his death was interred in the Potter’s Field. Collison used to put a flag on his grave on Memorial Day.