Parks

Painted entirely in gold, the Golden Fire Hydrant in San Francisco stands on the corner of 20th/Church Street – and is frequently overlooked despite being anything but inconspicuous: Mission Dolores Park just opposite steals the show from this city landmark, as the panoramic view it affords over the roofs of the city to San Francisco Bay is simply too beautiful.

Boston Common has heard lots of stories and influenced many lives in the course of its more than 380-year history. The oldest park in North America, it attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors each year – from Boston, from the US and from around the world. It has given a stage to such famous people as General Washington and Martin Luther King Jr. American history has been written here.

Autumn in Baltimore is a lovely season. It’s my favorite time to take gentle hikes within the parks that spread throughout the city like so many branches. Winter can be nasty and biting, summer is almost always sweltering and sticky, but Autumn and Spring are gentle, shining and just the right temperature, perfect for exploring the post-industrial, burgeoning, redefined city of Baltimore.

When in the second half of the nineteenth century a group of visionary city residents began plotting lines on a drawing board, what they designed in Chicago was to be the biggest park and boulevard system to date in the entire USA.

A new park development in one of Atlanta’s most disadvantaged neighborhoods has residents and city officials hoping for a renaissance of the area. It also raises the question of what parks do for cities and communities – as public spaces and historical places.  

President Teddy Roosevelt may have been the most celebrated frequent visitor of Rock Creek Park, where he would take his family on picnics, bring Army buddies or ambassadors on challenging climbs over its rocky hills and lost his wedding ring over the Boulder Bridge.

What do an abandoned house, Friedrich Schiller, a car’s electronic ignition system, and the national border between the USA and Canada have in common? The answer is Belle Isle Park in Detroit. The park is to be found on an island in Detroit River, directly on the border with Canada. At the island’s westernmost point, the view extends from Detroit’s skyline and across Ambassador Bridge to the Canadian side of the river.

Tompkins Square Park, a 10-acre, mixed-use public square in New York City’s East Village, is equal parts cultural intersection and urban backyard. Unlike parks of similar size — Washington Square Park, Bryant Park, Fort Greene Park—Tompkins Square is not noticeably iconic.