At a time when Cincinnati City Council has cut the Park Board budget by $250,000 and is considering future cuts, it is important to reflect on what parks have meant to us over the years. Understanding the rich horticultural history of Cincinnati may help guide us and prevent us from repeating the mistakes of our ancestors.

Postcard showing lake in Burnet Woods, no date | ZOOM |

        Jim Fearing, a Mount Adams architect who began working for the Cincinnati Park Board in 1990, designed the new Concessions Building in Theodore M. Berry International Friendship Park along Eastern Avenue. This work inspired him to research how the park came about and to consider the relationship of the park to its buildings and most importantly ask, why did the city build parks in the first place?

        A second question came to mind when Mr. Fearing learned that when BurnetWoods was built in Clifton for more than $1 million in the 1860s, the average annual salary was $360. Eden Park, built about the same time, cost $4.5 million. By today's standards, Mr. Fearing says, this land development would have cost taxpayers roughly $165 million. Who or what provided the impetus to spend all that money?

Gathering at Eden Park music pavilion, 1915. | ZOOM |

        Mr. Fearing began his search by looking at how our city forefathers might have thought about land and its development. For centuries in Europe, land preserves, called parks, were set aside for the king and common folks could be killed for poaching on this land. It wasn't until the 1780s that a German philosopher named Christian Hirschfield called for the creation of parks to be set aside for public enjoyment.

        Hirschfield proposed building “people's parks” to give those who were landless access to open land so they could enjoy nature and have the opportunity to build community with fellow citizens.

        Parks for the common citizen were built in Prussia and Bavaria before 1800. The idea took hold in Germany where parks were called “Volksgartens,” or people's gardens or people's parks.

        In the 1850s, the term, “people's park”found its way into newspapers and speeches in Cincinnati. The Over-the-Rhine district, full of Irish, Welsh, Polish, Bavarian, Prussian, Silesian, Bohemian and Rhinelander immigrants, was overcrowded and crime-ridden. The city's two parks — Lincoln and Washington — were too small to handle the needs of all the new immigrants.

Adolph Strauch

        At this time, landscape architect Adolph Strauch, who had worked in most of Europe's capitals, was hired to design Spring Grove Cemetery. He achieved world renown for the project and was asked to be the first superintendent of the Cincinnati parks in 1872.

        According to Mr. Fearing, the concept that land had the power to change lives was rooted deeply in the ideology of Prussian-born Mr. Strauch, who came to Cincinnati in 1852. He was steeped in the teachings of Hirschfield, who wrote about the merging of landscape architecture with social and political thought in his 1785 book, Theory of Garden Art.

        In Cincinnati, Strauch feverishly began buying land, working simultaneously at Eden Park and BurnetWoods. He envisioned a network of parks that would be accessible to all Cincinnatians. Recreation, education and relief for overcrowding in the inner city were part of the initial plans. He felt a special obligation to serve the people in the Over-the-Rhine, who lived in the worst conditions in the city, Mr. Fearing says.

Park Support

Today is the time to visit a Cincinnati park. It is the time to build a “people's park” in Over-the-Rhine. It is the time to increase the ranks of city park employees and park police and restore a sense of safety to our parks. It is the time to contact City Council members at 591-6000 to urge them to support our city parks.

        But not everyone welcomed the new park system. Prominent and wealthy Clifton residents did not want Over-the-Rhine residents in their neighborhoods, so they instigated a political battle that led to the Ohio Legislature abolishing the city park boards in 1875. The parks came under the control of Public Works. Land set aside for park expansion was sold and roads were built. Property for the extension of Eden Park into Over-the-Rhine was sold. Half of Burnet Woods was given to the University of Cincinnati.

        Later, 60 percent of Lincoln Park was lost to build Union Terminal. Washington Park, which remains today in Over-the-Rhine, was greatly reduced in size.

        Strauch resigned but continued to volunteer design advice to the city. He died of a stroke in 1883 at age 60.

        The park boards were reinstated in the 1890s and continued with renewed vigor from the turn of the century through the next 30 years.

        “The original reason to build the parks wasn't that green space was inherently good and must be preserved, but that green spaces are vital to human civilization,” Mr. Fearing says. “That was the reason City Council voted to spend so much money on these projects in the beginning. In the 1870s and 1880s, the pictures I have seen and stories I have read show that this wasn't just an experiment — it really worked.”

        Contact Peg St. Clair by phone: 541-4680; Web site: www.gardenersnetwork.org.
       

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