Growth
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.
Read more about this topic: Fairmount Park
Famous quotes containing the word growth:
“Here commences what was called, twenty years ago, the best timber land in the State. This very spot was described as “covered with the greatest abundance of pine,” but now this appeared to me, comparatively, an uncommon tree there,—and yet you did not see where any more could have stood, amid the dense growth of cedar, fir, etc.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“For the time of towns is tolled from the world by funereal chimes, but in nature the universal hours are counted by succeeding tribes of animals and plants, and by growth of joy on joy.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Yes, I am a thorough republican. No other form of government is so favorable to the growth of art.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)