Parking

In West Philly, the parks are bigger. Or at least they seem to be. Take Clark Park, located between 43rd and 45th Streets and Baltimore and Woodland Avenues. It is big enough to be split into several “sub” parks: North Park, Center Park, South Park—big enough that Chester Avenue runs through the middle, and big enough that it actually covers nine acres of land.

Clark Park seems to be “the” spot to go if you're out West. It has a year-round farmer’s market on Saturday, and then a market on Thursdays in the summertime (starting June 4 this year). It also hosts flea markets on a monthly schedule throughout the warmer months. It has basketball courts and playgrounds and apparently at any time of the year, groups of supervised kids/teenagers running around attacking each other with foam swords. I'd like to know more about that, so if anyone knows what the heck that is, kindly let me know. For the past several years, Shakespeare in Clark Park has been putting on free, outdoor performances of the Bard’s plays in the Bowl in the center of the park. This year’s play is Comedy of Errors. When Shakespeare isn't being performed in it, the Bowl serves as the park's dog run. Interestingly enough, the Bowl used to be a mill pond, fed by Mill Creek, and used to power factories in Grays Ferry.

The park was established in 1895 on land that was donated to the city by a prominent banker named Clarence Howard Clark. Prior to its being a park, the land was home to Satterlee Hospital, a large Union Army Hospital, during the Civil War. The Gettysburg Stone, located near the park's entrance on Baltimore Avenue, memorializes the 60,000 soldiers treated in that hospital. As its name implies, the stone originated from the battlefield at Gettysburg and was placed in the park in 1916.

Another famous statue located in Clark Park is that of Charles Dickens and Little Nell, an 1890 sculpture by Francis Edwin Elwell that is apparently the only existing statue of Dickens. Which, I guess really isn't terribly surprising, given that people don't tend to get statues made of themselves too often. Pranksters exist, however, even in Clark Park, and someone had placed a smashed pair of glasses upon Little Nell's head when I was last there. Weird, but unfortunately, not unexpected.

A quick glance at the reviews of the park on Yelp reveals that the main gripe people have with Clark Park is the uneven sidewalks and unkept grass. True, the sidewalks are a bit choppy, but the park has an active "Friends of" organization who, at this very moment, are working on revitalizing and renewing the park. The plan calls for new lighting, benches, sidewalks, and trashcans. A project to revitalize the North Park intends to expand the lawn areas, deal with storm water migration issues, and plant even more trees (the park already has about 300). Sounds like things are on the up and up for Clark Park, making it even more the spot to go to in the future.

Upcoming Events in Parks:
Gardening: Rose Care, Dickinson Square, Saturday 5/23, after the park clean up. Roses can be tricky. . .

Party: Hang Free, Memorial Day, 12:30PM until it gets dark. Free, biannual party in Fairmount Park with DJs spinning electronic music all day. Along West River Drive, just past the Strawberry Mansion Bridge.

Memorial Day: Festivities in Franklin Square. Face painting, balloons, jugglers. 5/23-5/24.

Get Involved: Dickinson Square Park Clean Up Saturday, 9AM, Tasker and 4th Streets.

Get your veggies: Farmer's Markets: Schuylkill River Park, Wednesday (starting today!), 3-7PM, Fitler Square (Saturdays, 9AM-1PM); Clark Park (Saturdays, 10AM-1PM), Rittenhouse Square (Saturdays 10AM-2PM).

If you know of anything exciting happening in your local park in the near future, please e-mail amy@phillyist.com!

Photo by the author