Fairmount Park

Fairmount Park is the municipal park system of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It consists of 63 parks, with 9,200 acres (3,723 hectares), all overseen by the Fairmount Park Commission.

Fairmount Park proper

The park system is named after its first park, Fairmount Park, which occupies nearly half the area of the whole system, at over 4,100 acres (17 km²). Today, the Commission divides the original park into East and West Fairmount parks. The original domain of Fairmount Park consisted of three areas: "South Park" or the South Garden immediately below the Fairmount Water Works extending to the Callowhill Street Bridge; East or "Old Park" which encompassed the former estates of Lemon Hill and Sedgley; and West Park, the area now comprising the Philadelphia Zoo and the Centennial Exposition grounds. The South Garden predated the establishment of the Park Commission in 1867 and Lemon Hill and Sedgley were added in 1855-56. After the Civil War, work progressed on acquiring and laying out West Park. In the 1870s, the Fairmount Park Commission acquired industrial properties along the Wissahickon Creek although this is not considered Fairmount Park proper. Likewise the Schuylkill River Trail is a modern addition and was not included in 19th-century acquisitions.

Growth

The park grew out of the Lemon Hill estate of Henry Pratt, whose land was originally owned by Robert Morris, signer of the Declaration of Independence. It was dedicated to the public by City Council's ordinance on September 15, 1855. A series of state and local legislative acts over the next three years increased the holdings of the city, incorporating mansions, waterworks, gardens, and even territory previously set aside for the Zoological Society of Philadelphia. In 1858, the city called for a comprehensive plan and the new Fairmount Park Commission held a design competition to determine the best way to “protect and improve the purity of the Schuylkill water supply” while also creating a naturally landscaped public park.

As the site of the 1876 Centennial Exposition and the first zoo in the United States, the Philadelphia Zoo, Fairmount Park was placed on the National Register of Historic Places on February 7 1972.

Properties

Today, the system includes the Centennial Arboretum, Philadelphia's Horticulture Center, Fairmount Water Works, Rockland, Joshua Fisher's The Cliffs (1753), William Peters' Belmont Mansion (1745), Woodford mansion, Memorial Hall, the Belmont Plateau, Japanese house, Bartram's Garden (America’s oldest living botanical garden), Philadelphia Museum of Art, Boathouse Row, Azalea Garden, recreation centers, reservoirs, and countless statues (as well as other pieces of art) as determined by the park.

Mount Pleasant, built in what was then the countryside outside of the city by a privateer.cite web |url= http://www.ushistory.org/districts/fairmountpark/mount.htm |title= Mount Pleasant. |format= html |work= Independence Hall Association |quote= It was built in 1761-62 by Captain John Macpherson, a privateer who had had "an arm twice shot off" according to John Adams. The pirate called the house "Clunie" after the seat of his family's ancient clan in Scotland. ] It is now an off-premise gallery of the Philadelphia Museum of Art in Fairmount Park.cite web |url= http://www.philamuseum.org/collections/216-20-244-37.html |title= "Fairmount Park Houses: Mount Pleasant." |author= Philadelphia Museum of Art |format= html |quote= Scottish ship captain John Macpherson (1726–1792) and his first wife, Margaret, built their grand country estate on this site—high atop cliffs overlooking the Schuylkill River—between 1762 and 1765. They employed as their builder-architect Thomas Nevell (1721–1797), an apprentice of Edmund Woolley, the builder of Independence Hall. ]

ee also

*Schuylkill Banks
*Philadelphia Aquarium

External links

* [http://www.fairmountpark.org Fairmount Park Commission, City of Philadelphia]
* [http://www.phillyzoo.org Philadelphia Zoo]
* [http://www.philart.net/tour.php?id=21 Public Art in Philadelphia]
* [http://www.fairmountparkconservancy.org Fairmount Park Conservancy]
* [http://jasgp.org/content/view/586/179/ Article: Cherry Tree Maintenance at Fairmount Park]

References