Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Design Plan For Franklin Park



This sketch comes from the Boston Daily Globe, February 18, 1886. The West Roxbury park is now Franklin Park. Benjamin Franklin had left the city of Boston a sum of money, to be invested and kept for 100 years. The city considered uses for the money - approximately $200,000 in 1882 - and voted in that year to use the money to retire the debt resulting from buying the land for the West Roxbury Park, and to name the park in honor of its illustrious benefactor. The actual renaming doesn't show up in the Globe archive until we see it on the sketch above.

Note that although the layout of the park shown above is very much like we know it now, there was no zoo and no golf course.

Addendum: Commenter Meg reminds me that the money from the Franklin fund was not used for Franklin Park. Due to a lawsuit by the heirs of Benjamin Franklin, that source of money was tied up in the courts, and the city paid for the park from other sources.


Additional source: Boston Daily Globe January 24, 1882

1 comment:

  1. Actually, the City never got to use those funds for Franklin Park, thanks to a lawsuit by Franklin's heirs. See http://www.bfit.edu/aboutus/history.php for a very extensive explanation. Franklin got his name on the park for free!

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