Vision endures for city’s parks system

Snyder Park, a gift to the city from David L. and John Snyder in 1895, still inspires residents today who see the possibilities. 

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By Tom Stafford, Staff Writer 1:10 AM Sunday, August 23, 2009

In 1907, George E. Kessler, the mastermind of the parks system of Kansas City, Mo., was invited to Springfield to take a look at 12-year-old Snyder Park and consider the city’s potential for a park system.

What he saw was what people saw before him, after him and some see today: the potential for a recreation and park area stretching along Buck Creek from the waterworks in what is now Old Reid Park, through the former village of Lagonda into what is now Veterans and Snyder parks.

“Conditions are seldom so fortunate as yours,” Kessler wrote in his official 1908 report, “and the unique situation in your city deserve particular attention, inasmuch as very few indeed of the communities ... of the United States, have such a fine opportunity.

“It would, therefore, be a very distinct misfortune if your community did not secure this entire valley.”

The gift

Kessler’s vision — which included neighborhood parks removed from the central system — was possible because David L. and John Snyder in 1895 surprised the entire community by giving 217 acres of creekside land to the citizens of Springfield for use as a park.

As a condition of the donation, the city agreed to make $20,000 of improvements, adding the stone bridge, boat house and shelter houses Springfield architect Robert Gotwald fashioned in a way that has made them community keepsakes.

Knowing that maintenance costs would always be an issue, David Snyder willed a $200,000 endowment for the care of the park and $25,000 for the metal bridge that now spans the creek and leads to softball fields and the Snyder Park Golf Course.

Artfully designed by their nephew, David, the structure “handsomely accomplished” its goal of “creating an artistic bridge that did not obstruct the natural view,” according to the Summer of 1990 edition of the Ohio County Engineer magazine.

Springfielders celebrated their new park April 20, 1897, with a parade that began at High and Limestone streets and wound its way to the Western Avenue entrance to the park.

The only work interrupting the festivities that day was the planting of donated trees through the park at the direction of landscape gardeners Hearlin and Haerlin, which had been supervising the plantings and manicuring the park to enhance its natural beauty.

Continued celebrations

Seven years later, a group led by Springfielder and former Ohio Gov. Asa S. Bushnell raised enough money to build a memorial arch for the Snyders at the park’s main entrance. (Again architect Gotwald is thought to have been the designer.)

And in 1910 and 1911, the memory of the brothers whose early money was made in the by then frowned-on trade of whiskey-making, were celebrated by grand concerts and speeches by dignitaries in the park.

In 1911, Springfield voters approved plans to let $50,000 in bonds to build a lake in the park, something the Sunday, June 26, 1926, newspaper would trumpet as “Springfield’s most beautiful scenic spot.”

Boating and canoeing were popular, as were the walking and bridal paths in the east end of park. Those later were altered and connected to carriage roads to the west to fulfill a vision Benjamin Prince spelled out in his 1922 Standard History of Springfield and Clark County.

The park, wrote the president of the Clark County Historical Society, “may become an automobile thoroughfare of great beauty.”

The influence of technology

Technological change shaped the park’s history in another way. The waterway that now seems part and parcel of parkland was the source of the city’s early industrial power.

Companies now are preparing bids on a project that will replace the former Rockway dam behind the Springfield Art Museum with a kayaking feature.

Decades before it was a dam, the park land of Veterans Park had been the quarry that supplied stone for the city’s early buildings.

“It was blasting,” wrote Prince, “that rendered Cliff (now Veterans) Park a possibility.”

But its industrial past also delayed some city officials from seeing its potential as a park.

“While serving as a member of the City Council ... it was George W. Billow who suggested the possibility of developing the waste land along Buck Creek,” Prince writes. But when George H. Frey was ready to abandon it, “the council did not recognize its opportunity.”

Later, Frey’s heirs sold the park land to the city, where it sits contiguous to Snyder Park.

What is a park?

Just as technology has shaped the park — moving its main entrance away from the memorial arch, where street cars once delivered picnickers — so have ideas and trends in recreation.

Jake Kallgren, curatorial and research assistant at the Turner Foundation, said that early on, the bridge their nephew designed was a kind of dividing line between social classes and the kind of recreation they sought.

The walking paths, ponds and scenic development in the east end of Snyder Park were aimed at the upper classes, who favored passive recreation — using nature for a peaceful escape.

On the west end of the park, home to a golf course, football field and softball field, tennis courts — and at times an archery range, shooting club and public polo field — is more of the active recreation.

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