It could easily be the name of a Netflix docu-series your work colleagues won’t shut up about, but the ‘Valley of Ashes’ is an epithet for the plot of land where New York City’s first purpose-built soccer stadium will open in 2027.
The moniker was coined exactly 100 years ago by F Scott Fitzgerald in his novel ‘The Great Gatsby’. It’s a fictional name for a real-life refuse dump at Willets Point. ‘Valley of Ashes’ lends more colour than ‘Willets Point’ and in the book the area represents a byproduct of industrialisation which made protagonist Jay Gatsby’s booming lifestyle possible.
In 2024 a well-struck baseball could theoretically land here from Citi Field next door. Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, home of the U.S. Open, is within walking distance. “It's an area that has been so desolate for a very long time,” explains Jen O’Sullivan, Chief Operating Officer at New York City FC. “If you grew up in this area, you knew it as the place to go if you lost the hubcaps on your car – it was just full of these ‘chop shops’ and auto body shops and not much else.
VIDEO On The Ground at the 'Hudson River Derby' in New York City
