Authorized in 1867, this 289-acre park was conceived in the Victorian Gardenesque style by Henry Shaw and donated to the City of St. Louis in 1868. Shaw had previously founded the adjacent Missouri Botanical Garden. Little altered since its conception, the park includes a series of pavilions, a music stand, shelter houses, mock ruins, lily ponds, bridges, fountains, statuary, stables, residences, and two conservatories, including the 1878 Palm House, the oldest standing greenhouse west of the Mississippi. The park also includes a collection of over 10,000 trees and woody shrubs of 435 varieties. In recent years, the park has undergone restored and rehabilitated a majority of the built historic features and the living landscape. A planting plan based on original plant lists and other documents guides the selection and installation of new specimens, gradually reestablishing much of Shaw’s original Victorian Gardenesque vision. The park was listed in the National Register in 1972 and designated a National Historic Landmark District in 1989.