Caption Danny Dromm and a lobbyist from Transportation Alternatives

Neponsit hospital will finally be demolished for a park and LGBTQ community is pissed

 

THE CITY 

 A city plan to demolish a long-abandoned hospital and nursing home in the Rockaways has drawn scrutiny from all sides — including those who want the building to stay up to protect a historic beach haven for New York’s queer community.

The public hospitals agency announced last month that three crumbling buildings comprising the former Neponsit Adult Home on Beach 149th Street would be torn down at the end of the summer season. The land would then be turned over to the Department of Parks and Recreation, and eventually be home to a park, with space for lifeguard facilities and parking, officials said.

“It’s been a community eyesore for a long time, and there really wasn’t a good plan for it for a very long time,” local City Councilmember Joann Ariola (R-Queens) told THE CITY. “I think it’s going to be a positive addition to the community.”

But those who flock to the sands behind the seaside building — including a historically Black and brown community of trans and queer beachgoers, and some nudists — fear tearing down the edifieces that acted as a shield will ruin their “utopia.”

The former hospital’s fence directly borders the beach, where beachgoers have built a monument to the late Ms. Colombia, a beloved NYC queer icon whose legacy they’ve celebrated each year since she died in 2018.

LGBTQ New Yorkers have congregated at Bay 1 — the first beach in the federally operated Jacob Riis Park — since the late 1950s, according to historians. Queer authors including Audre Lorde and Joan Nestle mention the beach by name as a safe haven in their works.

 Many in the community now believe tearing down the hospital and putting in a park where children play would make Bay 1 less of a safe space.

“There are so many places in New York City that we are not comfortable in. Riis is our home, our dance floor, our marriage place and our burial ground,” Ceyenne Doroshow, founder and executive director of Gays and Lesbians Living in a Transgender Society, or GLITS, told THE CITY.