{"id":193556,"date":"2026-04-11T18:36:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-11T18:36:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/193556\/"},"modified":"2026-04-11T18:36:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-11T18:36:11","slug":"one-4th-of-july-the-park-house-blew-up-joe-the-parkies-hells-kitchen-memories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/193556\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cOne 4th of July, the Park House Blew Up\u201d \u2014 Joe the Parkie\u2019s Hell\u2019s Kitchen Memories"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is an excerpt from Mosaic: Past Time in Hell\u2019s Kitchen, Michael Slattery\u2019s memoir, oral history and love letter to Hell\u2019s Kitchen, spotlighting the voices and memories that shaped the neighborhood\u2019s past and continue to echo through it in the present. Today, Joe Libonati \u2014 better known to locals as Joe the Parkie \u2014 shares his memories of working in DeWitt Clinton Park from the 1950s to the 80s.<\/p>\n

\"DeWittDeWitt Clinton Park is located in the northwestern corner of Hell\u2019s Kitchen at W52-W54th Street between 11th and 12th Avenues. Photo: Phil O\u2019Brien<\/p>\n

I worked in DeWitt Clinton Park from 1956 to 1982 and everyone called me Joe the Parkie. That is how everyone in the neighborhood knew me, no one knew my last name \u2014 Libonati. <\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t\"Michael\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

Michael Slattery is a lifelong Hell\u2019s Kitchen native whose memories of tenement life, street hockey, and the bustling West Side piers inspired his book Mosaic: Past Time in Hell\u2019s Kitchen. Drawing on decades of interviews he recorded with neighbors, Slattery weaves together oral history and memoir to preserve the stories of a community in flux. Though retired, he continues to see his work as an act of love for the neighborhood he has always called home.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t\tMore by Michael Slattery\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This is an excerpt from Mosaic: Past Time in Hell\u2019s Kitchen, Michael Slattery\u2019s memoir, oral history and love…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":193557,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[98,100,99,9,24,5406,63,52638],"class_list":{"0":"post-193556","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-brooklyn","8":"tag-brooklyn","9":"tag-brooklyn-headlines","10":"tag-brooklyn-news","11":"tag-new-york","12":"tag-new-york-city","13":"tag-nostalgia","14":"tag-nyc","15":"tag-slattery"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193556","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=193556"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193556\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/193557"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}