Build it..and they will come. Some will honk at it, while others will bike past it. Still more will meet friends there.
Longtime Forest Hills resident Larry Ng is close to realizing his dream of installing a 3D sculpture in MacDonald Park, near the intersection of Queens and Yellowstone boulevards.
Consisting of steel sheet metal welded to form large blue letters that spell “Queens” above a red base with “The World’s Borough” in white letters, the piece will be street level and easily approachable. It’ll weigh about 1,700 pounds and stand about 6 feet high with 22 feet of width and 1.5 feet of depth. The font will be American Typewriter just like the I❤️NY campaign.
Highly visible from all four sides, the goal is that locals, tourists, and influencers take photos there so it becomes instagrammable.
“Queens is a mosaic of America’s rich and vibrant multicultural history,” writes Ng on his website. “We need a sculpture that pays tribute to Queens’ ethnic and cultural contributions to New York City and the rest of the country. It is absolutely the best borough in the greatest city in the world.”
Ng already has permission from the NYC Parks Department and support from Friends of MacDonald Park Founder Stephen Melnick, Forest Hills Chamber of Commerce President Leslie Brown, Rego-Forest Preservation Council Founder Michael Perlman, and Forest Hills Asian Association Founder Edwin Wong.
The project will be funded by private donations and community crowdsourcing. As such, another supporter, Forest Hills resident and community volunteer Kevin Sanichara, has established a GoFundMe page. Plus, Ng is open to a sponsorship.
If all goes as according to plan, the unveiling will be on March 20, 2025. Then, the sculpture would probably adorn MacDonald Park for a year before finding a permanent home somewhere else in the borough.
Editor’s note: For experts, the statue’s colors are based on the Queens flag: blue (RGB 0, 132, 255), red (RGB 199, 5, 7), and white (RGB 255, 255, 255). It’ll mix bodywork, grinding, hard coating, primer, and paint. The coating will be outdoor grade, Polyurea ULXT66, hard coating. The paint will be outdoor latex. The finish will be durable and weather resistant.
Images: Larry Ng