Franklin Park Coalition

CONTACT:

P.O. Box 302333
Boston, MA 02130
617-282-2881
franklinparkcoalition.org

Christine Poff, Executive Director

DESCRIPTION:

Franklin Park is the city’s largest greenspace—a 527acre, southernmost “jewel” in Olmsted’s “Emerald Necklace,” designed in 1881, and said to be his finest work. It was named after Benjamin Franklin—son of Boston, Founding Father, “the first American,” and a paragon of American philanthropy (Cat’03). Olmsted envisioned a large forest, meadow, and pond, to nourish the souls of city-dwellers with varied experiences of Nature. “There is not within or near the city any other equal extent of ground of as pleasing, simple, rural aspect. Franklin Park possesses the soothing charm of breadth, distance, intricacy, and mystery—an aspect approaching grandeur.” That was then. Its forest is still the largest (200 acres) in Boston, but 70% oaks instead of Olmsted’s interesting variety. The “Meadow” was fragmented into tennis courts, an 18-hole golf course, the Zoo, stone ruins, etc. The Pond is stagnant. The Park and the neighborhood declined together; ethnic diversity intensified, not always peacefully. Cars and trailers on and off the roads became dispensaries of drugs, prostitution, and gang violence. But philanthropy to the rescue—“private initiatives, public good, quality of life.” In 1974 the neighbors, fed up, formed a classic American “voluntary association” (as Franklin often did). The “Franklin Park Coalition” was incorporated in 1978 to raise funds and volunteers to clean up the park. Elma Lewis, one of the founders, turned the abandoned ruins of Olmsted’s stone field house into a Playhouse in the Park. FPC gave teens summer jobs on cleanup, and sports nights were instituted—free pizza, basketball, and a safe venue for 50-70 teens—off the streets. Cultural festivals for thousands were sponsored on summer weekends. In 1980 FPC recycled 4,000 feet of granite blocks from the old Orange Line, to border all the park’s roadways, and keep vehicles off the turf. A local construction company voluntarily demolished and removed a defunct cement graffiti-covered public bathroom, eyesore, and drug headquarters. FPC was instrumental in saving the Boston Park Rangers. And so on. Almost incredibly, all this was done by over 1,000 volunteers, coordinated by a staff of four with no office. Last year the community’s development corporation invited FPC into their office building. Equipment, tools and furniture are donated or bought used and carefully maintained; even work gloves are washed repeatedly. “We are a small organization administratively, but big in every other way.” You can believe it, and join them.

(2007: HUMAN SERVICES: Well-Being)