The Future of Christ Church Park

Looks Like This

Billy the Goat and some friends in Rittenhouse Square.

Steal Billy! No, just steal the kids. They don't have to be these exact kids. They might even live close to Christ Church Park, at Second and Market, instead of over by Rittenhouse Square. But children and their moms and dads are crucial to the future of Christ Church Park.

There was a wonderful design workshop on the afternoon of Wednesday, August 8, on Church Street, between the church and the park. The workshop simply took half a tent in the regular Wednesday farmer's market, and it blended well, people trading in vegetables, handiwork, and ideas.

It was a warm day, but a lot of people found the time to stop by and put stickers on a sheet to show their preferences for various things (it turns out the park's walls and fences are not terribly popular). They could also write a comment on a small slate board and be photographed with their comment. Then the slate board would be erased for the next customer. And they could draw on tracing paper over a plan of the park and its environs, showing where they wanted new gates, new paths, more trees, etc.

All this will be processed and reported by the appropriate authorities. My immediate takeaway is that a lot of people do care about this park and see that it could function better than it currently does.

I spent several hours at the park during the design workshop. I watched and chatted, got an iced latte from Old City Coffee, took pictures, and spent some time with the park's official storyteller, whose bench is very near the grave of Founding Father James Wilson. Wilson signed both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, he served as an associate justice on the U.S. Supreme Court, and  he became the first professor of law at the University of Pennsylvania. Christ Church Park is officially named James Wilson Park.

The official storyteller told me and a couple from Virginia about Benjamin Franklin's wife, and we compared notes on literature. She told me Erik Larson's The Devil in the White City was one of her favorite books. It turned out she is from Delaware, so we also got to talk about Caesar Rodney and his famous ride through a thunderstorm to sign the Declaration of Independence.

All this was in the afternoon. In the morning I went to Sister Cities Park, in Logan Square, to take some pictures of the water features there. I have no idea whether Christ Church Park could pull off something like what's going on at Sister Cities Park, but I sure hope it can.

The wading pool and the rock garden.

The wading pool and rock garden are to the north of the cafe; the sprinkler field is to the south.

Sprinklers. Kids.

One thing that Christ Church Park doesn't need is a cafe. Old City Coffee is happily taking care of business at 221 Church Street. You can crawl there from the park, and that's almost what I did. It was a hot day. They do have air conditioning in addition to latte.

Old City Coffee.

See also The Invitation.