The first time I saw Washington Park was on a rather balmy afternoon during one of the food festivals. The park is rather unassuming with street level entrances on all sides and provided with a respite from the heat of Cincinnati summers. Nestled between the 12th, Race and Elm streets in the Over-the-Rhine neighborhood of Cincinnati, it is one of the oldest parks in Cincinnati.
I walked around the food stalls that day and was happy that such a green space existed in the middle of the city. It was a rather hot day and a lot of people were making use of the pop-up water jets to cool themselves off. The Cincinnati Music hall is right across this park which adds to its historical ambience. As I walked around the park, I saw a number of civil war relics around the park, a sobering reminder of the country’s divisiveness, back in the late 1860s. The park also had busts of Union army brigade commander Frederick Hecker and another bust of Colonel Robert Latimer McCook. As I was waiting for my beer in the concession stand, I could hear “Country Roads” played by one of the local bands in the bandstand gazebo.
My friend had his dog, Panther (Yeah! A dog named Panther, Don’t ask me why?) just jumping about after he saw the doggy water fountain. He jumped into the fountain and got himself all wet. Panther then just started shaking all over dripping water on all of us. If you just want to unwind from the daily hassles of life, the park has something called the American Classical Music Walk of Fame which has an interface where you can listen to classical music and take part in a tour produced by WGUC 90.9FM.
As the evening came to a close, with the sky turning bright red, beautiful lights were switched on in the park. They looked like fireflies flickering in the fading light of the day. I walked back with my friends having discovered one of the gems of Cincinnati.
Ziegler Park
Ziegler Park, situated across two of Cincinnati’s downtown neighborhood areas of Pendleton and Over-the-Rhine (OTR) represents one of the latest investments into a city that needs more such opportunities to get a breath of fresh air. Named after Cincinnati’s first mayor, David Ziegler, and owned by the city and managed by the Cincinnati Recreation Commission, this park was a product of negligence until 2017 when the city worked along with a private design firm on a multi-million dollar project to rebuild and expanded the park threefold to cover 4.5 acres of urban community-engagement center.
The park now houses facilities catering primarily to youth with a redesigned children’s playground along with new basketball and futsal courts. In an opportunity for families to participate, there is redesigned swimming pool that caters to people of all skill levels and offers lessons. Combined with a sprawling 2 acre green space in an urban and paired with other activities such as board games, the park also offers summer camps to fully evolve a park that was once a largely abandoned space for anything but communal activities, but now houses facilities essential to the betterment of Cincinnati’s youth and old alike.
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