Franklin Park

Designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, Sr., and John Charles Olmsted, this 527-acre park is the largest in the 1,100-acre chain of parks known as the Emerald Necklace. Almost 75 years after thirteen acres of parkland were confiscated to construct the Lemuel Shattuck Hospital, the hospital’s scheduled demolition offers the opportunity for the city to reclaim that acreage for the public park—only 60 percent of which is currently freely accessible to the public.

History

Designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, Sr., and John Charles Olmsted, this 527-acre landscape, the largest park in Boston’s Emerald Necklace park system, was intended to serve as the city’s “central” park. Originally called West Roxbury Park, the public park was renamed to honor Benjamin Franklin in 1885. That same year, Fredrick Law Olmsted, Sr., and John Charles Olmsted completed the park’s “General Plan,” dividing the expansive space into two sections separated by Glen Lane: the Country Park, which assumed two-thirds of the park’s acreage, and the northern Ante Park, which was dedicated to active recreational uses.

General Plan of Franklin Park, Boston, Massachusetts, 1885. Image courtesy of Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site.

For the Country Park section, the designers embraced a simple approach, preserving a prominent feature described by Olmsted, Sr., as “a lovely dale gently winding between low wooded slopes, giving a broad expanse of unbroken turf, lost in the distance under scattered trees.” Scarboro Hill dominates the western portion of the Country Park and originally faced a meadow, “the Heathfield,” located on the opposite side of the curvilinear Circuit Drive. For the Ante Park the designers proposed creating a promenade, termed “the Greeting,” to extend from Blue Hill Avenue half-a-mile to the northwest as well as a 30-acre meadow, called “the Playstead.” While the promenade that was proposed in 1885 was never built, the Playstead opened in 1889 and served as athletic fields. A 500- by 300-foot terrace, “the Overlook,” faced with boulders found on site, was built along the space’s western edge. In 1891 the two Olmsteds revised their General Plan to include Scarboro Pond in the Country Park section, and the water feature was completed in 1893. By utilizing existing topography, ledges, native “Roxbury” puddingstone, and vegetation, as well as designing rustic stone and thatch structures, the designers achieved a cohesive, Picturesque quality throughout the park.

Tennis at Franklin Park, Boston, Massachusetts, Date Unknown. Image courtesy of Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site.

In 1896, five years after golfing was allowed in the park, a nine-hole course designed by Willie Campbell was completed, assuming the Country Park Meadow. The course became the first in the city of Boston and was among the earliest public courses in the nation. A year later, John Pettigrew was appointed superintendent for the Boston Parks Department. He not only altered the golf course, but modified the original Olmsted plan, thinning tree stands in “the Wilderness” section of the Country Park. In 1910 Arthur Shurcliff, a former employee of the Olmsted office (1896-1904), was appointed landscape architect to the Boston Parks Department and prepared a plan for the Franklin Park Zoo, which was completed in 1912. In 1925 he redesigned the park’s Peabody Circle drives. The Playstead Overlook Shelter, designed by Olmsted, Sr., burned down in 1948 and the area was further altered the following year with the construction of the Art Deco style George Robert White Schoolboy Stadium. In 1949 thirteen acres located in the southwest portion of the park, comprising “the Heathfield,” were ceded to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the Lemuel Shattuck Hospital was constructed on the site in 1954.

Lemuel Shattuck Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, 1955. Image courtesy of Digital Commonwealth.

In 1971 several parks comprising the Emerald Necklace, including Franklin Park, were listed in the National Register of Historic Places. In 1978, the Franklin Park Coalition was founded and the landscape architecture firm Weinmayr Associates (now Weinmayr-Jay Assoc. Inc.) was hired by Boston Parks to prepare a Revised General Plan for the Franklin Park. In 1980, a report was published and the park became the third Emerald Necklace landscape (after Boston Common and Boston Public Garden) to be designated a Boston landmark. Franklin Park was however the first portion of the Emerald Necklace designed by Olmsted, Sr. to be granted such a designation. Enabled by the publicly supported Olmsted Historic Landscape Preservation Program, in 1984 the Halvorson Company (now Halvorson Tighe & Bond Studio) began the Franklin Park Master Plan. The plan, which was adopted in 1989 and published in 1991, resulted in a $32 million program overseen by the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Management, with support from then-Governor Michael Dukakis. The Necklace’s five core parks—Jamaica Pond, Olmsted Park, the Riverway, the Back Bay Fens, and Franklin Park—each received $1 million to advance essential work and to prepare preservation master plans. Child Associates later undertook historic preservation work at the park (1995-98), returning stadium parking to recreational lawn and reinstalling pathways that had been removed or altered. Pressley Associates rehabilitated the landscape and ruin at Schoolmaster Hill in the Country Park section in 1997, and rehabilitated park paths and trails in 2012. The City of Boston engaged Reed Hilderbrand, in collaboration with Agency Landscape + Planning and MASS Design Group, to provide another plan, called the “Franklin Park Action Plan” in 2019. Throughout the planning process the three local firms engaged local community members, holding multiple workshops. The soon-to-be-released plan will be followed by a public comment period.