Landscape Information
An important example of the work of landscape architect Marjorie Sewell Cautley, the park was a gift of local residents Malcolm Sutherland Mackay, his wife Helen Raynor Mackay, and his sister, Jennie L. Mackay to the Tenafly Board of Education in 1924.The Common’s original 30 acres included an athletic field, a baseball diamond, an outdoor theatre, game grounds, school gardens, a picnic grove, and a woodlot for the Boy Scouts and demonstration center for the Girl Scouts. The Common also served as an arboretum of native plants and included sycamore, birch, viburnum, dogwood, wild azalea, and sweet fern, some of which survive today. At the heart of the Common, space was set aside for a stone monument honoring Theodore Roosevelt’s conservation efforts.
Today, at approximately 10 acres, the Common’s overall size has been reduced but the historic core remains largely intact and continues to be an active recreational landscape. In 2006, the Theodore Roosevelt Monument was added to the National Register of Historic Places.
