Lincoln Park
Westside Avenue between Communipaw and Duncan Avenues
Main Entrance at Kennedy Boulevard and Belmont Avenue
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View of the Edgewood
Pool at Lincoln Park |
View of the gazebo
at Lincoln Park |
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| View
of the fountain at Lincoln Park Photo: P. Shalhoub, 2001 |
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Designed by landscape architects Daniel W. Langton and Charles N. Lowrie, Lincoln Park was begun in 1907. It was known as West Side Park until 1930. The name of the park was changed when the Lincoln Memorial was built at the Kennedy (then Hudson) Boulevard entrance. It has approximately 273 acres and is the largest of the seven parks under the supervision of the Hudson County Park Commission. In 1903, the Hudson County Park Commission was started to establish a system of county parks. A national parks movement at the turn of the twentieth century influenced the initiative. Its purpose was to revitalize industrialized communities and to provide them with public space for recreational activities. The architects Langton and Lowrie were active in the "City Beautiful" movement of architecture in the United States. Lowrie was the landscape architect for the Hudson County Park Commission for thirty years and designed several parks for the county's park system, such as the Stephen R. Gregg Hudson County Park in Bayonne. Most of the park's acreage consisted of the marshy and undeveloped woodlands along the city's western edge, but some existing houses and properties had to be purchased by the Commission. Jersey City resident Florence Pond Graham in Jersey City: As I Remember It recalls preparations for the construction of the park which included . She remembers that homes on lower Belmont Avenue were demolished or removed, "but some four story flats were bought and the new owner had them moved to the northeast corner of the Boulevard and Communipaw Avenue" (Graham 19). The apartments were later razed. At the entrance of the park on Kennedy Boulevard is a monument of Abraham Lincoln, the sixteenth President of the United States, who was assassinated during the Civil War. The seated Lincoln mounted on a pedestal, known as "Lincoln the Mystic" or "The Statesman," was designed by sculptor James Earle Fraser. It is an example of heroic sculpture of Lincoln that appeared in the 1920s and 1930s. The statue was commissioned by the Jersey City Lincoln Association on the organization's sixty-fifth anniversary in 1930. Lincoln Park is divided into Lincoln Park East and Lincoln Park West. The entrance to Lincoln Park East on Kennedy Boulevard and extends to Truck Route 1&9 and lies between Communipaw and Duncan avenues. Beyond the entrance and Lincoln Memorial are two gazebos that flank a promenade that leads to a fountain. Sculptor Pierre J. Cheron designed the fountain; it is 53 feet high and was completed in 1911. The fountain, decorated with water spouting frogs and allegorical figures, was restored by the county and rededicated on July 10, 1990. According the Graham, the city's first baseball club was at Belmont and West Side Avenue and the baseball diamond where they competed was at the location of the fountain (16). A path on either side of the fountain takes one around the interior of the park's perimeter. Within the park's eastern section are areas for passive and active recreation. There are walking paths and picnic areas as well as athletic facilities for tennis, basketball, soccer and running. The tennis courts at the southwest end of the park date back to approximately 1909. A tennis clubhouse, overlooking the lake, called The Lodge was built in the 1930s. Due to its distance from the tennis courts, the clubhouse failed to be used as intended. At one time the structure was used as the Summer Museum of the Jersey City Free Public Library. It was later leased to Ray Dillman who began the Casino-in-the-Park as a restaurant. Lincoln Park West runs along Truck Route 1&9 and adjoins the old Plank Road and the former swampland back to the Hackensack River, then called Glendale Woods. It lies between Communipaw Avenue/Truck Routes 1-9 and Duncan Avenue. This section of the park includes St. Peter's College athletic field, a baseball complex, commercial driving range, batting cages, a tidal pond and wetlands.
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| By: Carmela Karnoutsos Project Administrator: Patrick Shalhoub |
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