8. Daniel Carter Beard Memorial Square (1841)

Daniel Carter Beard Square, located in Flushing, Queens, is a tribute its namesake. Daniel Carter Beard was a distinguished resident of Flushing. A civil engineer, illustrator, and naturalist, Beard was the founder of the Boy Scouts of America in 1910 to teach boys about scouting and nature. The square was dedicated in 1943, two years after his death. The Boy Scouts affectionately referred to Beard as “Uncle Dan”. Today, Boy Scout Troop #461 and students from the Daniel Carter Beard Junior High School work to maintain and clean the park.

Known as Flushing Park until 1942, an 1841 map of the town of Flushing shows the site as a public park for the first time, making it the oldest public park in Queens. Four monuments stand in the park, including a Spanish-American War Memorial Flagpole (1950), a Civil War memorial obelisk (1865), an ASPCA horse trough (1909), and a World War I memorial by Hermon A. MacNeil (1925).