Results tagged “parking”

I have a new favorite park. Well, a new favorite park that I probably will not get to visit all that often because it's a bit far from where I live and I don't have much business in its neighborhood. I'm talking about Coxe Park, on Cherry Street and Beechwood Street (which interestingly enough, Google maps is unable to find. It's between 21st and 22nd streets.)

A fence surrounds the park, leaving only an opening at the Carpenter/13th Street corner. A shrub with bright pink flowers grows over by the fence along Christian Street, an unexpected summery display standing in contrast to the the bare trees and fallen leaves all over the rest of the park. Ridgeway is one of a number of parks participating in this week's Fall for Your Park leaf clean up, see below for more details.

Ah, Delancey Street... Always so pretty, particularly right now when the leaves are falling upon the cobblestone. That brings us to this week's park: Three Bears Park, or Delancey Park. It's a quaint little park located at 319 Delancey Street in Society Hill. The park offers a nice place of refuge if you're trying to get away from the hubbub of South Street (read: screaming and skateboarding teens) a few blocks away.

Weinberg Park is a small, triangular park located at Moyamensing Avenue, 6th and Jackson Streets in South Philadelphia. It's about a block and a half above Mifflin Square, and shares some of the same problems with that park—mainly litter. Often, seeing loads of trash on the ground makes me want to scream. But, in all fairness to the users of the park, the garbage can was overflowing. So, really, there was nowhere else for the crushed Old English cans and empty cigarette packs to go but on the ground. There may also be an issue with short dumping in the park as well, as bottles of car windshield wash were gathered around the trashcan. So unless someone was chilling out at the park with a bottle of washer fluid, it looks as though they made a special trip to the park to put their empty bottle on the ground. How thoughtful. In the random and kinda strange category, an empty Pathmark shopping cart was parked at the 6th Street and Moyamensing Avenue corner.

Today we venture over to Northern Liberties to check out Liberty Lands park, the only park located in the NoLibs (do people actually call it that?) neighborhood. Liberty Lands has a terrifc back story. It rests on the site of the former Burke Brothers Tannery. The land was donated to the Northern Liberties Neighbors Association (NLNA) in 1994. The original plan was to renovate the former tannery buildings, but the city stepped in, deemed the structures condemnable, and demolished them all. NLNA was then left with an empty lot that had over $1,000,000 in demolition and tax leins on it. Some donation. (Although the city did later forgive the $500,000 demolition lein).

This week, I will do the obvious and write about Rittenhouse Square. Everyone who has spent more than ten seconds in our fair city has heard of Rittenhouse, right? Heck, Robert Downey even made a documentary about the park, so you needn't have even been here to have heard about and gotten some sense of the experience in the park. But, still, it's unfair of me to ignore a park because it's popular or because I have some unspoken agenda to introduce you all to the smaller, more neighborhoody parks that abound in Philly. I cannot be a park snob. So, Rittenhouse: this week is your week.

Well, this past weekend was an exciting one up in Fairmount park. On Forbidden Drive, there was apple cider pressing, and there were open houses over at both the Pennypack and Wissahickon Environmental Centers. I managed to catch the last few minutes of the apple pressing, which was enough time for me to crank two apples through the cider press, sample some cider, and see a ten year old make apple butter and then watch in dismay as the apple butter came exploding out of the poorly sealed squirt bottle. So much for that.

Schuylkill River Park may just be my new favorite park. I remember when I first heard about it, years ago, when I was telling someone how much I liked to sit and relax in parks. I was told I simply must check this one out. It's by the river, there's a playground, and even late at night people are there with their kids. Great I thought, but she didn't mention the large community garden that makes up one part of the park or the tennis courts or the bike polo, or, alas, the train tracks. Although waiting trains on the tracks don't block access to Schuylkill River Park the way they do the Schuylkill Banks, they do create quite the eyesore. Really, it kinda sucks to traipse through the gardens at the park and look up to see a giant train full of Waste Management cars.

These week we venture up to Mount Airy to Allens Lane, which is part of the Fairmount Park system. Allens Lane has some sentimental value to me, as I've worked on some shows at the theater there. "What? There's a theater in the park?" you ask. Yes, there is, which is one thing I love about writing this column and exploring the parks in this city: I never knew Allens Lane "counted" as a park until I started poking around. Also, I love the fact that our parks are multi-faceted, not just places for running around outdoors and picnicking, but also for getting a nice dose of arts and culture.

I promised a big column this week and I meant it! Not only is it Museum Day throughout the city on Saturday (print out this pass and spend all day Saturday enjoying entrance to any of these museums for free!) but the Philadelphia is bursting with special activities for families!

I've been spending a lot of time in Marconi Plaza at Broad St and Oregon Avenue. It's a big plaza that spans both sides of Broad Street. It boasts two playgrounds (one on each side, each featuring rarely-seen-these-days geodesic dome jungle gyms), two baseball fields and a bocce court on the eastern side. Like its sister park, FDR, Marconi Plaza was designed by the Olmsted Brothers between 1914 and 1916 and served as the entry point for the Sesquicentennial Exposition in 1926. Originally, there were two reflecting pools on each side of the Plaza, but these were later filled in and now statues of Christopher Columbus and Guglielmo Marconi stand in their place, staring at each other across Broad Street. You probably know what Columbus' contribution to the world is, but may be unfamiliar with Marconi. I was, until I saw a little plaque on one of the walls along the plaza. He was a scientist who invented/developed a wireless telegraphy system, so information could be transmitted across the Atlantic. He won a Nobel Prize for his work.

Since last week's column was about Girard Fountain Park, I figured I'd try and keep things thematically linked and dedicate this week to Stephen Girard Park, down at 21st and Shunk Streets in South Philly. As was mentioned last week, Girard was an incredibly rich man. At the time of his death, he gave his property and money to the city, including the land that his country house, "Gentilhommiere," was located on. Gentilhommiere was where he lived after 1797 and was surrounded by a 583 acre farm, on which he apparently labored himself.

There's Girard Avenue. Girard College. Stephen Girard Park. And Girard Fountain Park, the focus of this week's column. All are named for or funded by Stephen Girard, a banker from the 19th century who is apparently credited with saving the US from financial breakdown in the War of 1812. Created in the 1960s, Girard Fountain Park is next to the fire company on 4th and Arch street at what once used to be 325 Arch Street. A fund established by Girard to improve the Delaware Front of the city was used to refurbish the park in 1976.The park is a pocket park, since it is only .15 acre in size (a little bit bigger than your average row home). Unlike other city parks, this one is not overseen by the Dept. of Recreation or Fairmount Park but by the Fire Department. When approaching the park, you'll first hear the rushing water from its eponymous fountain. That may be the only clue you'll get that this is the park, as there aren't any signs announcing what it is. I wonder if that keeps people away: for the hour I was there, I was the only soul in the park (save for the birds frolicking in the large bowl of bird seed set out for them).

There's a nice little park catty-corner to Washington Square, at 6th and Walnut Streets. I always wondered what this park was called. Well, turns out it's Independence Square, and it is part of Independence National Historical Park, which gave me pause about covering it. Should Parking only cover "Philly" parks, or are National parks within Philadelphia all right? I've decided it's all right if I only discuss the actual outdoor park part, and not the bells and whistles that go along with it (i.e., Independence Hall and Liberty Bell and pretty much anything over in that part of the city that requires that you wait in line and pass a security check). You may note my obvious hypocrisy here; a few weeks ago, I gushed over Shofuso in Fairmount Park, which you have to pay to get into and isn't really a park in the sense of you can picnic at it, etc. But, oh well.

Sometimes, I forget that there are certain parks in Philadelphia that I absolutely love. Take Logan Square (or Logan Circle, depending on your grasp of geometry). I hadn't been there for a long while, until this past weekend when I spent a few hours reading on the grass there. At the center of Logan Circle is the Swann Fountain, which was designed and created by Wilson Eyre, Jr. and Alexander Stirling Calder in honor of the founder of the Philadelphia Fountain Society, Dr. Wilson Cary Swann. The fountain is (in my mind) the most magnificent fountain in the city, and I think the vast number of people who visit Logan Circle just to jump in the fountain during the summer agree with me. (Side note: you're not actually allowed to swim in the fountain. "No Swimming" is pretty clearly painted around the fountain. But people do it anyway. And the faint smell of chlorine in the air when I was there last suggests to me that the city is going to look the other way on this issue.) It is also known as the Fountain of the Three Rivers as the three Native American figures in the center of the fountain were meant to represent Philly's three main waterways: the Wissahickon, the Schuylkill, and the Delaware. The fountain's design is a bit fun: there are turtles and frogs scattered around its perimeter, and the three figures in the center are each holding swans (haha, get it?). The geyser in the center of the fountain can shoot water up to fifty feet in the air.

Belmont Plateau is the last section of our Fairmount Park mini-series. The Plateau (located at Belmont and Montgomery Avenues) is mentioned in the song "Summertime" by a certain Will Smith, which I will spare you the quote from, and Philadelphia Weekly ran an article on it a few months ago, wondering if it is still "the place" to be. The article cites litter and people's excessively carefree attitudes about drinking out of doors as two major reasons why the Plateau is losing its appeal for some.

Our Fairmount Park series continues this week with a look at the Japanese House and Gardens, also known as Shofuso or the Pine Breeze Villa. The House and garden are located in Western Fairmount Park on the Horticulture Center grounds, just off Lansdowne Avenue. The Villa is only open from April through September. In order to tour the garden and house, you do have to pay an admission fee, but compared to other museums and such in this city, it is relatively cheap: $6 for adults, $3 for students/seniors, and free for members. And the price of admission is totally worth it.

It probably goes without saying that Fairmount Park is a huge park. So, over the next few weeks Parking will focus on one section or part of Fairmount each week. And even then, we still won't get through the entire park, just a tiny bit over on the western side.

Mario Lanza park has been described as an "oasis" and I'd have to agree. Fences at either entrance mark it off from the rest of the street. Plenty of trees provide cover from the sun and the noise of the city. A dog run located on the southwestern edge of the park lets dogs run free while their owners socialize. The dog run seems to be the place to bring your canine friend in Queen Village. The playing puppies and chatting owners provide a pleasant background hum.

Walking down Catharine Street in Bella Vista, you might not even notice the small park tucked in next to the Fleisher Art Memorial. Palumbo Park is located smack in the middle of the block, with an iron fence setting it off from the rest of the street so that it does not appear at first to be a public park. Once inside the park, the air is peaceful and mostly silent. Birds chirped in the trees when I visited and traffic sounds from Catharine were hushed.

Living in a city full of history, it is easy to miss things that are full of historical value and interest. We're lucky enough to have a wealth of fascinating locations at our fingertips and so don't always notice that they are there. Take this week's park for example. Located off 2nd street between Walnut and Chestnut Street in Old City, Welcome Park tends not to stand out. I always just thought of it simply as the space in front of the Ritz East movie theater and not as an actual park, let alone an actual park with a neat story.

Over at 52nd and Pine Streets lies Malcolm X Park. Malcolm X Park is yet another example of the community working together to create something they can share and enjoy. The park has an active "friends of" organization. The Friends group meets on the first Wednesday of the month, in the park during nice weather, and at a neighbor's home during the colder/rainier months. Annual dues are $5 for an individual or $10 for a household. Malcolm X Park also has a well-maintained blog, which details upcoming park events as well as the everyday problems occurring in the park such as short dumping and graffiti.

This week, we present another small park: Bardascino Park, at 10th and Carpenter Streets in Bella Vista. Bardascino was built on the site of the former Community Hospital in 1977. It was dedicated in 1978 and named for Guiseppe Bardascino, who formed the Philadelphia Brass Band in 1912. The park's condition deteriorated for some twenty years, until residents of the area took action. They began holding clean-ups and meeting with the Dept. of Recreation to map out the future of the park. A Friends of Bardascino Park organization was ultimately formed, giving the residents a voice in the park's future. Over the years, the Friends planted various plants, removed dead trees, repaired benches and raised funds through bake sales and bocce tournaments.

When I wrote about Clark Park a few weeks ago, I offhandedly stated that in West Philly, the parks are bigger. I wrote that before having visited Cedar Park, a small community park situated on a triangle of land between Baltimore Avenue, Catharine Street, and 49th and 50th Streets. Cedar Park is on the tiny side, but that's okay. On the sunny Saturday I stopped by, children were playing on the playground, older men were arguing with each other about something in that way that makes it clear they're not mad, and other people lounged about, keeping on an eye on the kids. Vendors were set up along the Baltimore Avenue side of the park, selling jewelry and various sundry things. It is rumored that the Carrot Cake Man is there selling his cakes in the evenings.

It smells wonderful in the Azalea Garden. Located just behind the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the garden is chockablock with azalea bushes, rhododendrons, lilacs, different kinds of trees, and various other plants I can't identify. Azaleas are early and quick bloomers—they peak in May and by now, their blooms have, for the most part, faded away. However, the rest of the garden is still going strong, attracting many people for a picnic or a tour on a Segway. Thanks to the Segway tour that rolled through the garden last time I was relaxing there with a book, I learned that the tree I was sitting under was a "weeping willow on the top and a cherry tree on the bottom." Also thanks to the Segway tour, I had the strange feeling that I was about to battle robo-humans.

If you need to take a quick break from the bustle of Center City, Louis I. Kahn Memorial Park is for you. It's a small park, less than an acre in size, that takes up the Northwest corner of 11th and Pine Streets. Known as a "concrete park" because, well, there's no lawn, only paving, the park has a magnificent garden and fountain along its innermost edge. Trees dot the landscape, providing shade and making the park on a hot day a good ten degrees cooler than the sidewalk surrounding it. Benches and small tables (perfect for playing chess or eating lunch) are scattered throughout the park.

In West Philly, the parks are bigger. Or at least they seem to be. Take Clark Park, located between 43rd and 45th Streets and Baltimore and Woodland Avenues. It is big enough to be split into several “sub” parks: North Park, Center Park, South Park—big enough that Chester Avenue runs through the middle, and big enough that it actually covers nine acres of land.

This week we're going to venture over to the oldest botanic garden in North America, Bartram's Gardens. Okay, you might say, that's not a park, it's a garden. But I'll argue that it is a park, in that it's property that is being preserved for the public to enjoy. For instance, the oldest gingko tree in North America resides in Bartram's Gardens, as do a large number of native plants. It's more a park in the National Park sense than in the city square sense.

And does this mean that there will finally be an end to illegal Sunday parking?

If you feel like taking a trip or if you live out in Southwest Philadelphia, then this week's park is for you. There was enough nice weather on Saturday that I was able to ride out to 71st Street and Buist Ave, almost to the city's edge, to visit Elmwood Park. It was my first time ever over in the Southwest part of the city, and I was pleasantly surprised. It's not a bad ride, and there are plenty of bike lanes on the streets out that way, just watch out for kids doing wheelies down the wrong lane. Yikes.