Pre 2000

Green space grows in southern suburbs

New parks to sprout in southeast and southwest Mecklenburg, Union and York

By Celeste Smith, July 19, 2009

Park lovers, rejoice: More green space is on the way in the southern suburbs.

In southern Mecklenburg, public planning sessions are scheduled later this month for two new parks.

In York County, the City of Rock Hill recently enhanced the 50-year-old Glencairn Garden and expanded it from six to 11 acres. City of Tega Cay officials expect to break ground soon on a 100-acre park along the Catawba River.

Riverbank State Park
http://nysparks.state.ny.us/parks/info.asp?parkID=75
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riverbank_State_Park
West Side Highway from 137th Street to 145th Street
679 Riverside Drive
New York, NY 10031

Fairmount Park Commission
Memorial Hall, West Park
Philadelphia, PA 19131
United States
Phone 1 (215) 685-0000
http://www.phila.gov/fairpark

The Wissahickon Valley Park follows the winding path of Wissahickon Creek in the northern section of the larger Fairmont Park system, to the northwest of the city of Philadelphia. Wissahickon Valley Park, however, is its own entity, having been the first piece of publicly owned land in the U.S. that was preserved mainly for its scenic qualities.

Along its rectangular, 3-mile length, between Fulton Street and Lincoln Way in San Francisco, Golden Gate Park offers scores of possibilities for urban outdoor recreation: lawn bowling, tennis, golf, Frisbee golf, soccer, archery, equestrian, and a pool dedicated to fly-casting practice. The park’s west end abuts the Pacific Ocean.

Access to Rock Creek Park, part of the National Park system, begins at the western end of The Mall, in Washington DC, following a slim, winding corridor along Rock Creek upstream and through the National Zoological Park, north of Georgetown. The lower access opens into a sizeable wooded green space of 1,754 acres between 16th Street and Oregon Avenue, due east of Chevy Chase, Maryland.

Boston’s Emerald Necklace is a series of nine parks interconnected by both pathways and waterways. Boston Common, Public Garden, Commonwealth Avenue Mall, Back Bay Fens, Riverway, Olmstead Park, Jamaica Pond Park, Arnold Arboretum, and Franklin Park form a “necklace” roughly 7 miles long. All these parks are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Stretching from East 56th Street southward to East 67th Street, Jackson Park is both park and coastline, situated between South Stony Island Avenue and Lake Michigan, about 8 miles south of The Loop. It is next to the Hyde Park neighborhood, and just to the southeast of the University of Chicago.

Situated just off the northwest corner of Central Park are 30 acres of rocky but pastoral woodland that became a park due, in part, to the fact that city planners in the late 1860s considered street construction through these geological formations too difficult an undertaking. The Board of Commissions for Public Parks rejected two original design plans, including one from the famous team of Frederick Law Olmstead and Calvert Vaux, in 1873.

Riverside Park is a four-mile-long green space that winds along the Hudson River from 62nd to 158th Streets in Manhattan. The land here was originally part of the Hudson River Railroad. An 1866 measure by the New York State Legislature provided for conversion to a park. Frederick Law Olmstead, one of the creators of Central Park, prepared a design plan in 1875, after the first land purchase in 1872. This design was refined through 1910.

Brooklyn’s rolling, woodsy Prospect Park first opened in October 1867, while still under construction. The 585-acre park arises from an original 1861 design by Egbert Viele, after a New York State Legislative act in 1859 created a commission to find park sites in what was then the City of Brooklyn.

A rectangular 843 acres, Central Park sits in the very middle of Manhattan, between 5th and 8th Avenues and 59th and 110th Streets. The first public park in the U.S., it is the flagship of Frederick Law Olmstead’s designs, created in close collaboration with British architect Calvert Vaux. Mostly completed by 1877, Central Park became a model for urban parks around the country. Yet the Park itself was literally created from scratch, with 500,000 cubic feet of topsoil hauled in from New Jersey to cover the land that the city had purchased for $5 million.

Once the site of Allard Plantation facing Bayou St. John, City Park's 1,300 acres offer visitors a sample of the city's riches both in fine art and natural splendor. City Park is home of the New Orleans Museum of Art and the largest collection of mature live oaks in the world. Trees in the oldest grove are over 600 years old.

CPIA was established in 1891 to provide for the improvement of City Park. The Louisiana Legislature placed City Park under the control of CPIA in 1896 and invested it with the authority to operate and develop the park.