Fairmount Park Conservancy in 2021

Dear Friends,

At the Conservancy, 2021 was a year for reconnection, restoration, and renewal. After a year dominated by virtual and hybrid programming during the initial wave of the pandemic, we ramped up our efforts throughout the past year to offer over 100 events and public programs that encouraged more than 8,000 residents and visitors to reconnect with East and West Fairmount Park, FDR Park, and our neighborhood parks. Through a wide array of programs that included old favorites like the summer scavenger hunt, yoga at Lemon Hill, and the seasonal We Walk PHL, plus new activities such as salsa dancing and kayaking at FDR Park, we were thrilled to welcome so many people into the Philadelphia park system to reconnect with nature and with us.

It was also a year of restoration, as we built momentum on major capital projects getting underway at FDR Park and in West Fairmount Park: advancing designs for the restoration and adaptive reuse of the former FDR Park guardhouse as the first-ever Welcome Center for the 348-acre park and an extension of the Parkside Edge project that will help restore safe pedestrian and bicycle access to West Fairmount Park. Our historic preservation team led major restoration projects, including significant exterior repairs at our new headquarters at the Ohio House in West Fairmount Park, and won awards from the Preservation Alliance for Greater Philadelphia for their contributions to projects at the Smith Playhouse and the First Unitarian Church.

Finally, it was a year of renewal and growth, with the long-running Stewardship and Natural Lands teams and our new Volunteer program hosting more than 60 events, bringing nearly 3,500 volunteers into Philadelphia parks, and planting 7,000 trees, while the Farm Philly program produced and distributed nearly 14,000 pounds of organic produce while engaging 500 community gardeners.

It was a busy year for the Conservancy, and that’s how we like it. With so much more to come in 2022 and beyond, I hope you enjoy taking a moment to reflect on the year behind us.

See you in the park.

Maura McCarthy, Ph.D. Executive Director

Led by the Conservancy, Philadelphia Parks & Recreation, WRT, and the Friends of FDR Park, the  FDR Park Plan  has provided the blueprint for a once-in-a generation opportunity to reimagine a historic Olmsted Park to serve 21st century Philadelphians. Guided by the community-driven plan, the Conservancy and Philadelphia Parks & Recreation began implementation in 2021, focusing on advancing four projects that will comprise the  Gateway Phase : the Welcome Center, Pattison Playground, Gateway Plaza, and the People’s Plaza and Habitat Terrace. Design of the Welcome Center and  Pattison Playground  got underway in 2021, with construction set to begin in 2022 and both scheduled to open in 2023.

Through this first implementation project, the park’s historic stables and guardhouse are being transformed into a new Welcome Center, just beyond the park’s main entrance at Broad Street and Pattison Avenue, with offices for community programming partners, a food and drink venue for park users, and visitor services including a staffed information center, equipment rentals, concessions, community spaces, and public restrooms. Meanwhile, the existing playground, which is undersized for the scale of the park and plagued by extensive flooding, will be replaced by the new Anna C. Verna Playground, a world-class destination playscape that will be the first of its kind in South Philadelphia. The playground will pilot adaptive and inclusive natural play areas for the first time within the Philadelphia park system while dramatically expanding the footprint of the playground and adding more family-focused picnic sites.

As people discover (or rediscover) FDR Park in record numbers amidst the backdrop of the global pandemic and the greater appreciation for parks and green spaces that has resulted from it, the Conservancy continues to deepen our engagement at the park. We hosted an annual virtual open house attended by over 250 residents and stakeholders, weekly public events including salsa dance classes and birdwatching walks, and special events including several engagement events during the Philadelphia Flower Show last June. Meanwhile, our Natural Lands team carried out invasive plant species removal, general maintenance, and live staking around the park’s lakes.

The FDR Park Welcome Center and Anna C. Verna Playground projects are supported by the City of Philadelphia, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, the 1772 Foundation, and the Widener Memorial Foundation.

The Conservancy was quite active in West Fairmount Park in 2021. In the spring, we moved into our new headquarters at Ohio House, one of two historic buildings that remain in the park after being built for the Centennial Exposition of 1876. The building, which had been vacant for six years after decades of intermittent use and a modest run as a cafe, has become an office space for the Conservancy’s staff of 29. Ohio House will ultimately serve as a community-facing hub for hundreds of park volunteers and thousands of nearby neighbors and an outdoor event space for public events and civic engagement.

Just down the road, along Parkside Avenue, the Conservancy began work to close the remaining “gap” in the 2018 Parkside Edge project by making pedestrian-driven improvements to a 1.2 acre portion of land that connects the East Parkside neighborhood with the iconic Welsh Fountain and the Please Touch Museum. Construction got underway in 2022 to create pedestrian walkways, seating, ADA access, landscaping, signage, and more. The project represents the first in a series of planned improvements to address pedestrian access and wayfinding within the Centennial District of West Fairmount Park. 

Deeper in the park, the Conservancy and Avid Trails completed construction of the final segments of the 4.5 mile  Trolley Trail  over the winter. In the spring, our Natural Lands team planted 125 trees at one of the trail’s main entrances in order to establish it as a more prominent gateway, and another 50 trees along a portion of the trail to replace invasives and missing canopy. While the soft surface, multi-purpose loop is already open year-round for public use, the Conservancy will install wayfinding signage, trail markers, and bike racks prior to officially cutting the ribbon on the trail in fall 2022.

The Parkside Edge Gap project is funded by the William Penn Foundation, the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, the Horace Goldsmith Foundation, and the McLean Contributionship. Work on the Trolley Trail was funded by the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission, the 25th Century Foundation, and Athletic Brewing Company.

In East Fairmount Park, the Conservancy constructed two  horseshoe pits  across the street from Woodford Mansion, along with new bike racks, benches, and tree plantings. The project, which began with an idea from the East Park Coalition, was carried out in partnership with Philadelphia Parks & Recreation and was designed and installed by Apiary Studio. In July, the Conservancy and partners cut the ribbon on the new horseshoe pits, which are free to use on a first-come, first-served basis, with horseshoe sets available to borrow at Woodford Mansion.

At 33rd Street and Girard Avenue, the Conservancy has been working to establish the Hatfield House in East Fairmount Park as a community-led arts space for the Strawberry Mansion neighborhood. In 2021, we helped bring the house to life with 10 events and art installations. Local artists displayed their work both inside and outside of the house, and several community events brought performances, music, and vendors to the lawn throughout the year.

In January, Strawberry Mansion-based artist Victor Bunn’s portrait honoring the life and legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. was installed from the columns of the house facing 33rd Street. In March, West Philly artist Brian Bazemore (known as BCASSO) unveiled his artwork  Remember , a towering sculpture that spells out MMXX (the roman numerals for 2020) and an accompanying canvas featuring text that focuses on the events and stories of the year. In August and September, Hatfield was home to the immersive, site-specific art installation  Ancestors returning again / this time only to themselves  by Black Quantum Futurism, a multi-layered experience combining video, sound, and physical objects. The installation featured the film Write No History, which was filmed on location.

Hatfield also exhibited work by Tiny WPA, Serena Saunders, Jocelyn Thompson, and Ken McMarlane, served as event space for organizations including Mothers in Charge and Net Community Care, and established new partnerships with local organizations including the Fletcher Street Urban Riding Club, J&B Press, Sally Blagg, and Sacks Entertainment Consortium.

The Conservancy also continued our investment in the historic building and grounds, improving the house’s visibility and accessibility for near neighbors. Our programming brought new audiences to Hatfield House and promoted a greater awareness of the space for programming for 2022 and beyond.

Support for the horseshoe pits was provided by ArtPlace America, and programming at Hatfield House was supported by the Knight Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Last year the Conservancy’s Natural Lands team carried out its critical work of reforestation, wetland enhancement, meadow establishment, and invasive species management across Philadelphia’s seven watershed parks and other natural areas.

Among the year’s program highlights, the team  planted  more than 1,500 trees and shrubs at Tacony Creek Park and Houston Ravine in the Wissahickon, and on a smaller scale at other sites including the Trolley Trail – working closely with Philadelphia Parks & Recreation and the PowerCorps PHL workforce development program on all planting efforts.

They also completed seeding work at sites covering 14 acres, including new wildflower meadows at four sites in West Fairmount Park – the Georges Hill Meadow, Ohio House Meadow, MLK Drive North Meadow, and MLK Drive South Meadow. Through this five year  mow-to-meadow project , they will establish five acres of new meadow while reducing five acres of turf mowing in the process.

At Edgewood Lake in FDR Park, they carried out a process called  “live staking”  that allows us to restore areas impacted by erosion. Live stakes are branches of trees that are cut while the trees are dormant and then planted directly in the soil to develop roots and grow into new trees. The team completed invasive management and removal at the lake and planted 125 live stakes that will contribute to a healthier lake and lake edge and a diverse, native ecosystem.

Perhaps most importantly, the team carried out critical and day-to-day behind the scenes efforts throughout the park system, including spring and fall plantings to increase biodiversity, future canopy, and habitat, routine summer and winter maintenance such as mowing invasives, clearing deadfall in planting zones and along trails, structural pruning, meadow mowing to reduce woody plant pressure, trimming and maintaining miles of trails, and mowing/hand clearing of planting sites during the summer to reduce invasive pressure on young trees.

Finally, we expanded the capacity of our Natural Lands team in 2021, with a Natural Lands Field Coordinator joining our team to establish and protect trees in natural areas, help facilitate the Natural Lands Volunteer Training, and create a natural lands training for PowerCorps leadership. The work with PowerCorps involved weekly service in natural land areas, direct engagement with four crews, and training in invasive removal, plantings, and habitat construction.

The Conservancy’s Natural Lands work in 2021 was supported by Philadelphia Parks & Recreation, the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, the Western PA Conservancy, the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, and the 25th Century Foundation.

Since the start of the pandemic, the Conservancy’s activation team has played a critical role in welcoming park users to key park geographies in an effort to strengthen and sustain communities, improve the park experience, build audiences, and test place-based strategies in East and West Fairmount Park and FDR Park.

In 2021, the Conservancy hosted 141 programs that drew 6,396 attendees, including old favorites like hikes, trail runs, and yoga classes, and new ways to explore Fairmount Park and FDR Park, from Friday night salsa classes at FDR to kayaking on the Schuylkill to stargazing at Lemon Hill.

We expanded on our popular summer  Scavenger Hunt  by offering a winter version, called  WinTOUR , bringing 639 teams into East and West Fairmount Park to brighten the winter season and bring activity into the park during the off-season. In the summer, we launched a new edition of the scavenger hunt at  FDR Park , drawing 330 teams to the lesser known parts of the park for fun and family-friendly activities from June through September. 

Continuing a pandemic intervention from 2020, the Conservancy installed nine park hubs in East Fairmount Park (at Woodford Mansion, Mount Pleasant, and Lemon Hill), West Fairmount Park (at Concourse Lake, Chamounix Drive, and South Concourse Drive) and – for the first time ever – hubs at FDR Park (at the Asian Market, the soccer fields, and the FDR Boathouse). In the spring, summer, and fall, the presence of these hubs made park exploration a little easier with wayfinding signage, recommended routes, take-away park maps, hand sanitizer stations, and temporary bathrooms at a pop-up hub wrapped in iconic park imagery. At FDR Park, we also introduced a new park map, introduced the  PHLASH shuttle  on the weekends to help visitors navigate the park with ease, and created a special installation for the Philadelphia Flower Show in June.

The Conservancy’s award-winning conservation team completed historic preservation projects at 16 historic sites in 2021, with major projects including the restoration of the Wissahickon Guard House, Ohio House and Hatfield House renovations, the restoration of balustrades at Glen Forde, and the completion of the roof restoration of the Sheep Barn near the Monastery House in the Wissahickon. Our staff also received two Grand Jury Awards from the Preservation Alliance for Greater Philadelphia for work at Smith Playhouse and the First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia completed in 2020.

At Hatfield House, which has come to life over the last few years as a community hub for the Strawberry Mansion community, our staff completed emergency ceiling repairs, while at the Sheep Barn at Ridgeland Mansion in West Fairmount Park, we completed a roof restoration project that addressed urgent structural concerns at the site – the result of deferred maintenance and roof leaking. The scope of the work included rafter replacements, wall plate repairs, new roof installation, and cornice repair and reconstruction.

At the Conservancy’s new headquarters at the Ohio House, the preservation team tackled critical exterior woodwork and chimney repairs, restoring the three original porches and repairing the building’s two chimneys. These repairs allowed us to improve the safety of the  building, help ensure its long-term sustainability, and begin to re-establish the grandeur of this historic site as a destination within West Fairmount Park. 

The 1772 Foundation, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and the Walter J. Miller Trust provided key project support for the preservation program in 2021.

Each year, Fairmount Park Conservancy’s Neighborhood Park Stewardship program partners with Philadelphia Parks & Recreation to engage thousands of residents and corporate volunteers in the improvement of the city’s neighborhood parks. In support of this volunteer-driven work, the Conservancy also leads a year-round, city-wide effort to build capacity, encourage collaboration and facilitate learning experiences among the 130 Park Friends Groups in the  Park Friends Network .

After a year of virtual events, the Conservancy’s stewardship team returned to in-person volunteer service days with Love Your Park Week from May 8-16. The spring service day on Saturday was a huge success, bringing 1,422 volunteers to 92 participating parks across Philadelphia.

For the Love Your Park Fall Service Day, we celebrated the newly-formed Friends of Elmwood Park by designating Elmwood Park in Southwest Philadelphia as the signature site. The community came out to clean and green the 7-acre park – raking leaves, mulching trees and planting bulbs – all to help prep the park for winter. In addition to Elmwood, we had volunteer workdays at 92 participating parks totaling 2,792 volunteer hours from 1,396 volunteers. By the end of the day, our volunteers had recycled 36,360 pounds of leaves and planted 145 trees along with 3,900 bulbs.

Throughout the year, we also hosted over 300 volunteers from nearly a dozen different companies in the fields, creeks, and park forests for civic service and team-building. Audacy led the way, recruiting 72 employees for a huge clean-up at FDR Park, while Philadelphia Insurance pitched in with a tree planting event along the Trolley Trail. Additional volunteers from Braskem, INOLEX, PECO, Penn Medicine Communications, and Stantec tended gardens, mulched tree groves, cleaned waterways, planted wildflowers, and more.

In support of these volunteer days and in service to our growing network of volunteers, we coordinate year-round capacity building opportunities for the Park Friends Network that represents 130 neighborhood parks and community gardens. Our Stewardship team facilitates quarterly meetings, skill-sharing conferences, a neighborhood-centered park bus tour, and a season-ending celebration. In 2021, we provided neighborhood collaboration grants to 10 dynamic programs that encouraged park stewards to team up and collaborate with other public space advocates in their community, including library friends groups and recreation advisory council members. We also provided outreach kits to help smaller community groups to promote their parks and attract more people in the neighborhood to come out to the parks. We awarded 48 Park Friends groups either a Little Free Library, a t-shirt Kit or a tabling kit. Finally, in 2021, we were able to expand our use of the volunteer and event management system, GivePulse, to make it easier for volunteers to sign-up and groups to participate. We hosted workshops and online webinars to orient our Park Friends Groups to the new system. 

The Park Stewardship program and Love Your Park Week were sponsored by Deer Park, the Knight Foundation, PECO, and TD Bank, with additional support from the Dolfinger-McMahon Foundation.

During the pandemic, the Conservancy launched a new Volunteer Program to engage year-round with volunteers in the park’s natural areas and on priority Conservancy projects. Its focus is on building community and relationships through volunteer leadership training, a public volunteer series, corporate volunteer events, special programs, and additional support during Love Your Park.

In March 2021, the Conservancy kicked off the  Natural Lands Volunteer Leaders  program which provided training and support to 19 new volunteer leaders. This included over 20 hours of expert training on natural lands and volunteer management, the skills and resources to lead volunteer workdays, and support to provide an additional 20-hours of volunteer service through the end of the year.

Over the summer, volunteers involved in the new  summer volunteer series  produced 639 volunteer hours, tended to 675 trees, collected 356 bags of trash, and 195 bags of weeds and vines at several sites including Concourse Lake, Mander Playground, Parkside Tunnel, and Parkside Edge.

Overall, in its first full year, the Volunteer Program hosted 32 public events, 610 total volunteers devoting 1,633 volunteer hours, 11,827 pounds of trash removed, and 229 trees planted. 

With support from the Miami Foundation, the Conservancy is leading the next phase of Reimagining the Civic Commons in Philadelphia. Through “Civic Commons 2.0,” the Conservancy and Philadelphia Parks & Recreation are partnering with community-based organizations in Parkside, Strawberry Mansion, and Southwest Philadelphia to test new models for activation, build capacity among partners and emerging resident leaders, and foster collaboration between organizations and across neighborhoods, placing public space in the foreground of resident-driven revitalization efforts. In year two of this work, we continued our leadership of the Philly-based cohort with the Centennial Parkside CDC, Strawberry Mansion CDC, and Bartram’s Garden to deepen our engagement in a national dialogue on best practices for community-led investment in public spaces.

In year two, the Conservancy has continued to take the lead as convener of the local Civic Commons group, working to further define internally the role of Civic Commons practices in our own work and in our role supporting peer-to-peer opportunities across Philadelphia. In addition to our consistent work with Park Friends Network, the biennial Public Space Summit, and ongoing engagement efforts in support of the City’s Rebuild sites, the Conservancy has completed two smaller projects within the project focus areas: helping the Centennial Parkside CDC establish a new weekly Farmers’ Market at Parkside Edge in West Fairmount Park and completing new and free-to-use horseshoe pits in East Fairmount Park – both of which were ideas that originated with local community groups that the Conservancy was able to help move forward.

We also embarked on a major capital project at the Parkside Edge of West Fairmount Park in late 2021 to complete construction of pedestrian walkways, lighting and interpretive signage, ADA access, landscaping, and other related site improvements at a 1.2 acre portion of park along Parkside Avenue. The resulting gateway will better connect the Parkside neighborhood to the iconic Welsh Fountain, the Please Touch Museum and 1,400 acres of West Fairmount Park. The completed project will have an immediate impact on the ability of Parkside residents to safely access and navigate the park and will immediately improve the basic conditions of this historic district.

 We Walk PHL  is a free walking group that meets several times per week at various public parks. Launched as a pilot program in 2017, We Walk PHL was created in a partnership between the Conservancy, Philadelphia Parks & Recreation, and Philly Powered. The program has grown since its inception from three to 17 parks with expanded funding, and each site has one to three walks scheduled each week during the season.

We Walk PHL seeks to promote positive health activity and outcomes, increase use of Philadelphia’s park system, and create opportunities for people to pursue fitness goals while meeting their neighbors. It encourages people of all ages to visit their local parks and explore new ones by getting out for hour-long walks with their friends and neighbors. The group minimizes isolation, promotes health and self-care, creates social bonds and friendships, empowers communities through education and advocacy opportunities, and much more. Utilizing social media, We Walkers share information about walks, recruit new members, and set challenges, share resources, and draw inspiration from one another. Walk leaders are recruited from the communities surrounding the parks and receive training from We Walk program staff. We Walk leaders receive a thank you stipend for their community service.

In 2021, We Walk grew to 1,992 members and had 3,500 registered attendees during the two month season. The group is also quite socially active on its  Facebook group , with 5,940 posts, 11,237 comments, and 120,522 post reactions.

We Walk PHL is supported by the City of Philadelphia Department of Public Health.

 Farm Philly  began in 2014 as the urban agriculture program of Philadelphia Parks & Recreation.The goal of Farm Philly is to connect Philadelphians to the natural world and physical activity, support the self-determination and sovereignty of communities to grow their own food, and support urban agriculture projects on park land and support food policy and advocacy within the city.

With the support of the Conservancy over the last five years, Farm Philly has grown significantly and now runs several programs, including the Community Gardens Network, Community Propagation Program, Community Compost Network, and Junior Farmers Program, while working to implement the new Urban Agriculture Plan.

At their home base at Carousel House Farm, Farm Philly staff produced over 3,800 pounds of fresh, organically grown produce, while 150 gardeners rented 75 tables to grow over 100,000 seedlings of vegetables, fruits, flowers and medicinal plants through the Community Propagation Program, and more than 500 community members actively gardened and grew over 10,000 pounds of food at 20 community gardens. Fifteen recreation centers gardens in the Junior Farmers program engaged over 600 students in summer camp and spring/fall after-school programming. At Hunting Park, the Conservancy invested $40,000 in improvements at the community garden, including the installation of 20 new garden beds that will be easily accessible for gardeners of all ages and abilities. In 2021, the Conservancy also hired the Farm Philly Coordinator, our first full-time staff member dedicated to Farm Philly.

Since 2012, the Conservancy has partnered on  TreePhilly , a city-wide tree planting program of Philadelphia Parks & Recreation that is working to restore the critical tree canopy to 30% coverage in all Philadelphia neighborhoods, improve the overall environmental health of the city, and address environmental equity issues to improve the lives of residents. TreePhilly empowers Philadelphia community members to enrich life in their neighborhoods through the planting, care of and connection with trees. Since its inception, TreePhilly has distributed over 27,000 trees through the Community Yard Tree Giveaway Program.

In 2021, the TreePhilly team planted over 5,000 trees, distributed 1,704 yard trees, and hosted 35 tree giveaways in the spring and fall, while working with more than 30 community partners, building relationships with neighbors and institutions, and increasing partner support through canvassing, tabling, tree deliveries, and more. 

Major efforts of the program last year included the completion of the  Philly Tree Plan , the City’s first-ever urban forest strategic plan. It involved three months of deep community engagement using seven different tools and resulted in a 10-year strategy to grow, protect, and care for Philadelphia’s tree canopy and calls for new ways of working with residents to combat climate change.

TreePhilly is generously sponsored by TD Bank.

We also wish to extend a sincere thank you to the many other donors who continue to give generously each year, as well as to the following public agency partners whose leadership continues to support our work: Philadelphia Parks & Recreation; Philadelphia City Council; the Managing Director’s Office; the Office of Arts, Culture, and the Creative Economy; the Office of Transportation, Infrastructure, and Sustainability; Philadelphia Department of Public Health; Philadelphia Streets Department; Philadelphia Water Department; the Philadelphia City Planning Commission; and Rebuild.

Please note that the Conservancy endeavors to maintain complete and accurate records. If you notice an error or omission please contact the Development Department at 215-988-9334.