Landscape Information
On a bluff overlooking the Big Sioux River, Terrace Park occupies land that belonged to one of the city’s early pioneers, Josiah Phillips. Through the vision of local businessman Edwin Sherman the park became the cornerstone of the Sioux City park system. Its original 52 acres were purchased in 1916 and planned by Frederick Spellerberg, the city’s first Park Superintendent.
Initially park activities were structured around the Phillips mansion, built of regional quartzite rock in an Italianate style. As the city acquired adjacent land and property across Covells Lake, the park was expanded to include tennis courts and a natural outdoor theater at the lake’s edge. Spellerberg’s signature improvement before his death in 1925 was to create a series of wide, shallow terraces with paths and picnic shelters on the steep bluff leading down to the lake. In the late 1920s, a Japanese garden was built on the lake, with carefully placed stones, arbors and reed lanterns. During the 1930s the Works Progress Administration and other programs built quartzite retaining walls, ball fields, and a larger outdoor theater. The park experienced renewed improvements in the late 1980s, when a citizens’ group hired Koichi Kawana to restore the severely degraded Japanese garden. Kawana added a gazebo and pond with waterfalls, and planted more than 200 trees.
