Fort Tilden: Abandoned
On Memorial Day weekend, my dude and I decided to (mostly) stay in the city, which ended up being a wonderful decision. I hate the word "staycation" so I won't call it that, but I love that I can usually satisfy even the severest case of wanderlust without ever leaving the five boroughs. We chose to go to Fort Tilden because it satisfied our holiday weekend beach requirement, in addition to providing some wonderful history and an excellent crop of abandoned structures.
Fort Tilden is a former US Army post, located on the Rockaway Peninsula in Queens. We biked there once before, but this time we took a bus, which took about an hour from Brooklyn. Like Floyd Bennett, Fort Tilden is now a part of the Gateway National Recreation Area, controlled by the National Park Service.
Before we even got to the beach I declared it my "favorite beach excursion ever" because we spent the first half of our day exploring the various abandoned military structures that line the pathway to the beach. We couldn't quite figure out what the structures were originally used for, but we guess that they might have been storage facilities for ammunition and supplies. We saw several of the same type of building, each with garage doors at either end, raised sides and wooden rails that probably held racks of some sort.
The buildings are in such a lovely state of decay, with trees growing up through cracks in the cement, creeping vines creeping every which way, and rusty beams that look as if they're going to snap at any moment. There was some evidence that these structures might be popular places to hang out—chairs, beer cans, a package of honey buns—but we barely saw anyone the entire time we were exploring.
The structures basically function now as open-air graffiti galleries, and it seemed the closer we got to the beach, the better the art became. There were some really wonderful pieces and the contrast between the colorful murals, rusty metals, crumbling ceilings and lush greenery was everything my nascent, urban-explorer heart desired. I knew there were ruins at Fort Tilden, but the few buildings that we explored really exceeded all of my expectations—and quickly made Fort Tilden one of my very favorite places.