Saturday, May 7, 2016
We had a few hours of sun before rain was threatened, so we headed to Rockefeller Park, a stretch of green between Wade Park and Gordon Park in Cleveland, OH. Wade Park.
In 1882, Jeptha Wade donated land to the city upon which he envisioned as the site for the Cleveland Museum of Art, thus we have Wade Park, the Wade Oval, and the Wade Park Lagoon.
Over by the shore of Lake Erie, when William J Gordon died in 1892, he left his land on the condition it would forever be a free, public park.
During a celebration of Cleveland's centennial in 1896, it was announced that John D Rockefeller was not only donating the land along Doan Brook between Wade Park and Gordon Park, but also providing money for its beautification and maintenance.
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| Rockefeller Park sign (5/22/2016) |
The meandering road along Doan Brook is now Martin Luther King Jr Drive (formerly Lower East Boulevard, then Liberty Boulevard), which is paralleled by [Upper] East Boulevard. Doan Brook is an unusual urban stream in that most of it remains open without having been extensively diverted into underground culverts. The banks of the stream have been reinforced with vertical walls of large stone blocks.
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| A reinforced steep bank of Doan Creek |
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Looking back over the man-made Rockefeller Park Lagoon
(note the wind is picking up!) |
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Taxodium distichum/Bald Cypress
with "knees" at the water's edge |
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The city is now repairing the walls with original stones,
or with stones from local quarries,
rather than to use steel sheetpiling as in the past |
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| Here is that steel sheetpiling |
There are numerous stone bridges over Doan Brook as it meanders back and forth across/under the road. The four major bridges were designed by Charles F Schweinfurth to carry streetcar lines and a railroad over the valley, in Richardsonian Romanesque style.
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Wade Park Avenue Bridge (1899);
note that there are plantings along the top of the bridge |
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| Curving staircase from the Wade Park Avenue Bridge |
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| Superior Avenue Bridge (1900) |
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| Superior Avenue Bridge "turret" |
(We returned on Sunday, May 8, 2016 to see more.)
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| St Clair Avenue Bridge (1899) |
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| St Clair Avenue Bridge detail |
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Under the St Clair Avenue Bridge
with yellow brick |
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| Looking south from under the St Clair Avenue Bridge |
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| View of MLK Jr Drive from the St Clair Avenue Bridge (5/22/2016) |
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You don't even realize you are on a bridge
(5/22/2016 |
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| St Clair Avenue Bridge over Doan Brook (5/22/2016) |
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| Bridge for the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway (1898) |
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| Left side of railway bridge as it crosses Doan Brook |
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| Lots of fields of white flowers |
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| Erigeron sp/Fleabane |
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| Uh oh, rainwater and sewage discharge! |
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Doan Brook bridge near East Boulevard
access south of the Rockefeller Park Greenhouse |
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Across the street is this large tree
(can you see Kent?) |
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In the city proper of Cleveland, an
Odocoileus virginianus/White-tailed Deer |
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| This is why they call them white-tailed deer! |
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| An interesting concave mound |
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| Cancer Survivors Plaza (1996) designed by Miloslav Cekic |
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50-foot high carved brick gazebo called the
Tree of Life, with stylized aluminum bird wings |
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| Detail of Ohio indigenous plants and wildlife |
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The Positive Mental Attitude Walk arbor
with four inspirational and ten instructional plaques |
Richard (co-founder of H & R Block) & Annette Bloch have established a Cancer Foundation, and one of their goals is to build a Cancer Survivors Park in each of the 50 states, and provide perpetual maintenance. So far there are 25 such parks, each individually designed, but all with the
Positive Metal Attitude Walk and the
Cancer-There's Hope sculpture.
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| The Sun Farm is not very productive today! |
At the Rockefeller Park Greenhouse end there is Sam Miller Park.
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Entrance to Sam Miller Park, named for a
major Cleveland philanthropist whose
honors and achievements could fill a blog post |
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I went to see what was the significance
of the irregular pentagon; I can only guess it
might be a sundial, but the flagpole is doing that job!! |
The main reason we went to Rockefeller Park was to see the
Cultural Gardens, which will be in another couple of posts.
2 comments:
The irregular pentagon is the gnomen of the sundial, so it does the tracing of time. The flagpole is just a flagpole. The shadow of the flagpole doesn't tell very good time and sometimes it's as much as 4 hours off.
Anonymous: Thank you so much for identifying that irregular pentagon! For us sundial novices, the gnomon is the part that casts the shadow.
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