This is a valley of ashes–a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens; where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and, finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air. Occasionally a line of gray cars crawls along an invisible track, gives out a ghastly creak, and comes to rest, and immediately the ash-gray men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up an impenetrable cloud, which screens their obscure operations from your sight.”
— F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, Ch. 2
14 years later, Robert Moses turned it into Flushing Meadows Corona Park for the 1939 World’s Fair. He sequestered the ashes in the foundation of the Van Wyck Expressway.
Anne Percoco 