Frank D. O'Connor Playground

NYC Parks records that this land was formerly part of the settlement of Middleburg, established in 1652 by English Puritans, and that by the turn of the 20th century it was part of a larger holding owned by the real estate investor and philanthropist Stuard Hirschman. In 1935 the Board of Transportation permitted NYC Parks to use two parcels on the east and west sides of 78th Street for recreation, and the Works Progress Administration developed them into a playground and sitting area in 1937. The park was named in 1993 for Frank D. O'Connor (1909-1992), whom Parks describes as raised in Elmhurst and a graduate of Newtown High School and Niagara University; in 1953 he defended Christopher Emanuel Balestrero, "a musician who had been wrongfully accused of two holdups in Queens," the case behind Alfred Hitchcock's 1956 film "The Wrong Man." O'Connor was Queens District Attorney from 1955 to 1965, then President of the City Council, was elected to the State Supreme Court in 1968, and was appointed to the Appellate Division by Governor Hugh L. Carey in 1976.