Fairmount Park

by Daniel Chester French and Edward Clark Potter Fairmount Park, Philadelphia's first park, occupies adjacent to the banks of the Schuylkill River. The 1923 and 1976 USA Cross Country Championships were held in the park. 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. Purchased by the city in 1844, the estate 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. In 1858, the city held a design competition to re-landscape Lemon Hill and Sedgeley for public use as the best way to better protect the city's water supply. (Ironically the land the Sedgeley mansion was built on had originally been owned by Robert Morris although after his bankruptcy it had been sold to a different purchaser then Henry Pratt). The park was the site of the 1876 Centennial Exposition and the first zoo in the United States, the Philadelphia Zoo, and was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1972. Wissahickon Valley Park, located adjacent to the park's immediate northwest, was included in the Fairmount Park NRHP registration document. ==In popular culture==

The outdoor scenes of the 2000 period art-horror film A Chronicle of Corpses were shot in Carpenter's Woods in the Wissahickon Valley Park part of Fairmount Park. ==Properties==

Park properties include the Centennial Arboretum, a Horticulture Center, Fairmount Water Works, Memorial Hall (home of the Please Touch Museum), Shofuso Japanese House and Garden, Boathouse Row, Smith Memorial Arch, Smith Memorial Playground and Playhouse, recreation centers, reservoirs, statues and other pieces of art. including the Medici lions known as the Florentine Lions installed in 1887. The Art Association continues to commission and care for a large number of sculptures, in coordination with the park and city. In 2007, the Art Association installed Iroquois by Mark di Suvero near the Philadelphia Museum of Art on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. Historic houses Mount Pleasant, built in 1762–65 for a Scottish ship captain named John Macpherson, is administered by the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The Art Museum also administers Cedar Grove Mansion, a house built in 1748–50 in what later became the Frankford neighborhood of the city. Cedar Grove was relocated to the park in 1926–1928. Other historic houses in the park, listed by year of construction, include Boelson Cottage (1678–84), The Lilacs (c. 1711), Letitia Street House (c. 1713), Ridgeland Mansion (1719), Belmont Mansion (1745), The Cliffs (1753; ruins since a fire in 1986), Woodford Mansion (1756), Hatfield House (1760), Randolph House (c. 1767; renamed Laurel Hill Mansion in 1976), Strawberry Mansion (c. 1783–89), The Solitude (1784–85; located within the zoo), Sweetbriar Mansion (1797), Ormiston Mansion (1798), Lemon Hill Mansion (1800), Chamounix Mansion (1802), Rockland Mansion (c. 1810), and the Ohio House which was built for the Centennial Exposition of 1876. Sedgeley Mansion was built in 1799 on Lemon Hill, then abandoned and later demolished after being acquired through eminent domain by the city in 1857. The Sedgeley property also included a servant's cottage constructed of stone which still exists. The cottage was designed by Benjamin Henry Latrobe and is presently known as the Sedgeley Porter's House. ==See also==