Eastside Park (originally dedicated as Washington Park, alternately referred to as East Side Park) is a park located in Paterson, New Jersey. The park is bordered by Martin Luther King, Jr. Way (Broadway) to the north, McLean Boulevard (State Route 20) to the east, Park Avenue to the south, and Derrom Avenue to the west. Eastside Park is the cornerstone of the Eastside Park Historic District, a state and nationally registered historic place added to the National Register of Historic Places on July 7, 2004.
History.
Eastside Park has its roots in the development plans of former Civil War Colonel Andrew Derrom, who had purchased undeveloped lands between 1868 and 1872 and built a mansion and club house in the Eastside section of the city in 1880. A year later, city leaders decided to establish a public parks system for the city, but a city ordinance authorizing the purchasing of land in the city's took seven more years to be enacted, with the first land purchased by the city being Colonel Derrom's 66-acre property for $75,000.
In 1899, Eastside Park was formally designed by John Y. Culyer, a landscape architect from New York City who served as a commissioner on the Paterson Parks Commission. Culyer's resume included serving as the assistant engineer in both the Central Park and Prospect Park developments by Frederick Law Olmsted. Ironically, Culyer was tasked with the Eastside Park project while Olmstead had won the city's Westside Park design competition, and both parks would be considered examples of the growing City Beautiful movement.
Eastside Park soon became the catalyst and anchor for the rapid development of Paterson's Eastside neighborhood, with the Eastside Park Historic District area directly adjacent to the park becoming the location of mansions built by the city's industrialists and mill owners. By 1915, the surrounding neighborhood included over 500 structures, and the park had been modified to include a stable, pavilion, arbors, and a club house. The original mansion built by Colonel Derrom had been torn down, however.
During the 20th century, the park underwent continual change, including the addition of tennis courts and the renovation of the park's baseball fields through the state Department of Environmental Protection "Green Acres" program. One of these baseball fields has since been named in honor of Larry Doby, a star athlete and graduate from nearby Eastside High School, who later became the first African-American to play in the American League, being picked up by the Cleveland Indians in 1947.
However, during these additions, some of the original pathways and structural elements were removed. The original stable and pavilion have been modified and restored, and are among the few architectural representatives of Culyer's 1899 design. The city's Eastside Neighborhood Association takes special care of the park, and often has cleaning days in the park that coincide with their annual neighborhood House Tour.
References.
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