The land that is now the 80-acre Cheesman Park, the grounds of the Denver Botanical Garden and Congress Park further east was originally Prospect Hill Cemetery. The cemetery was converted and named Congress Park in 1898. German-born Reinhard Schuetze considered the park design his masterpiece with graceful loops of carriageways and a pavilion upon a high knoll. A central meadow edged by groves of trees slopes down to the lily pond. Franklin Street on the western edge of the park was planted with double rows of lindens reiminiscent of Berlin’s Unter den Linden. Upon Schuetze's death in 1909, S.R. DeBoer completed the park following Schuetze’s plan. In 1910, George Kessler designed the grounds of the neoclassical Cheesman Pavilion. That same year the park was renamed for Walter Cheesman. The park  was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1986 and is listed on the Colorado Register of Historic Places.