Crotona Park is a public park in the South Bronx in New York City, covering 127.5 acres (51.6 ha). The park is bounded by streets of the same name on its northern, eastern, southern, and western borders, and is adjacent to the Crotona Park East and Morrisania neighborhoods of the Bronx. It is divided into four portions by Claremont Parkway and Crotona Avenue, which run through it.

Crotona Park formerly belonged to the Bathgate family, a prominent landowning family in the South Bronx. It was created through the New Parks Act in 1888 as part of a boroughwide network of parks connected by parkways. The Crotona Play Center was added in 1936. Crotona Park was formerly 155 acres (63 ha), but the northern portion was cut off by the Cross Bronx Expressway in 1945, becoming what is now known as Walter Gladwin Park. After a period of deterioration in the late 20th century, several improvement projects were commenced starting in the 1990s.

Crotona Park includes a 3.3-acre (1.3 ha) lake, as well as numerous recreational facilities such as a swimming pool. The Crotona Play Center, a national and city-designated landmark, is in the western part of the park. The park is operated by the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, also known as NYC Parks.

In the 1870s, landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted envisioned a greenbelt across the Bronx, consisting of parks and parkways that would align more with existing geography. This contrasted with Manhattan's grid system, laid out during the Commissioners' Plan of 1811, which had given rise to Central Park, a park with mostly artificial features within the bounds of the grid. However, in 1877, the city declined to act upon his plan. Around the same time, New York Herald editor John Mullaly pushed for the creation of parks in New York City, particularly lauding the Van Cortlandt and Pell families' properties in the western and eastern Bronx respectively. He formed the New York Park Association in November 1881. There were objections to the system, which would apparently be too far from Manhattan, in addition to precluding development on the parks' sites. However, newspapers and prominent lobbyists, who supported such a park system, were able to petition the bill into the New York State Senate, and later, the New York State Assembly (the legislature's lower house). In June 1884, Governor Grover Cleveland signed the New Parks Act into law, authorizing the creation of the park system.

Acquired in 1888 as a result of the New Parks Act, Crotona Park is on part of the former estate of the Bathgate family, which owned large plots of land in the South Bronx. Alexander Bathgate, a Scottish immigrant, had acquired the land from his employer Gouverneur Morris. At the time, the land comprising present-day Crotona Park was called Bathgate Woods, which was on a high point and contained woods and a pond called Indian Lake. The Bathgate family opened the area near Indian Lake to the public, and it became a picnicking spot. The Bronx Department of Parks, in its 1884 report to the state legislature, noted the land as having "indispensable requisites for a park", such as a "luxuriant growth of forest" with native oaks, elms, and magnolias, as well as proximity to railroad lines such as the Third Avenue elevated and the Harlem Line. Due to rapid urbanization, Bathgate Farm quickly became one of the few remaining greenspaces in the Bronx. When the Bronx Department of Parks acquired the parkland, it originally planned to name the now-public parkland Bathgate Park. Due to one park engineer's disagreements with the Bathgate family, it was named "Crotona", after the ancient Greek city of Crotone in what is now Italy, and to distinguish it from the nearby, similarly named Croton Aqueduct water system. The northernmost section of Crotona Park was known as Old Borough Hall Park due to the presence of Bronx Borough Hall in the park.

The park did not receive many improvements until the 20th century. Indian Lake's perimeter was paved in the early 1900s, and an ice-skaters' concession stand and a warming hut were installed. In addition, landscaping work was performed, and a new grandstand for concerts and ball games was erected. Three hundred American elms were planted around the lake in 1903. Two years later, an athletic field for the New York City Department of Education was built. A bill was introduced in the Assembly in 1909, which would install a New York National Guard armory in Crotona Park. The bill was heavily denounced by the public, and though both the Assembly and Senate passed the bill, mayor George B. McClellan Jr. vetoed it. Crotona Park was expanded via land acquisition in 1907 and 1911, and extra tennis courts were added in 1915. A concrete wall around the lake's perimeter, as well as lamps and paths, were installed in 1914. A "farm garden", to teach children about farming, was added in 1928.

By 1911, local landowners complained that the sporting events at the athletic field and bandstand were too loud. They requested that the field be moved further within Crotona Park. In 1916, several local landowners filed a lawsuit, calling the athletic field and bandstand "nuisances" that were not conducive to park operation. Some of these landowners alleged that they could not sell their property.

In 1934, mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia nominated Robert Moses to become commissioner of a unified New York City Department of Parks and Recreation. At the time, the United States was experiencing the Great Depression; immediately after La Guardia won the 1933 election, Moses began to write "a plan for putting 80,000 men to work on 1,700 relief projects". By the time he was in office, several hundred such projects were underway across the city.