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Fairmount Park
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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.
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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.
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.
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 Fairmount Park Art Association.
The 63 neighborhood and regional parks are:
