Landscape Information
Located in the City Point area of South Boston, along Pleasure Bay, Frederick Law Olmsted, Sr. intended this park to be the final jewel in the city’s Emerald Necklace park system. In 1897 he laid out a plan for a grand boulevard leading from Franklin Park to Marine Park to connect Roxbury to the ocean in South Boston. However, his plans for the grand boulevard were never realized due to the difficulty of building over rail lines and aquiring land from encroaching structures, so Marine Park was never fully integrated into the network of parks. From 1894 to 1895, E.M. Wheelwright, the City of Boston’s official architect, built a resort named Head House (demolished in 1942) in the southeastern section of the park. The park saw multiple alterations during the 1950s, including the construction of a permanent causeway at its north end that connected Marine Park to Castle Island, effectively enclosing Pleasure Bay.
The 255-acre park is bisected by Broadway, the eastern end of which contains a traffic circle featuring a bronze statue of Admiral David Farragut (1893) by Henry Hudson Kitson. The northern half of the park contains Murphy Memorial Skating Rink and athletic fields, and the southern half features a bandstand, open green space, and a playground. A beach runs along the park’s eastern edge. The park is owned by the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation.
