New York Parks Cope With Growing Decay

In Central Park, the once green lawn of the Sheep Meadow is wearing away, gradually becoming a dust bowl with overuse. At the Bethesda Fountain drugs are routinely sold, and the Duck Pond each night becomes a receptacle for beer and soda cans.

In Flushing Meadows Corona Park in Queens a Federal demolition crew, 12 years late, takes apart the steel skeleton of the United States Pavilion, one of the last vestiges of the 1964-1965 World’s Fair, the fair that was to presage a great new park for Queens.

Excerpt from Ferretti NYT 5/26/77