All photos in this chapter are © by Joe Konz
Many an open-aire painter has been struck by the artistic appeal of the decades-old stone bridges in Garfield Park, and none has been copied onto canvases more than the pedestrian bridge along Conservatory Drive as shown in the first few photos below.
The first photo was taken during my visit to the park on Jan. 8, 2005. The next three were taken Dec. 29, 2012. A sliver of the Burrello Family Center is in the background on the left in the fourth photo. Below those are four monochrome conversions of subsections of the bridge, including an ornamental sphere near the end of a handrail.
Landscape architect George Edward Kessler and park pagoda architect Daniel Deupree are credited for devising the stone bridge structures, which include, in addition to the Conservatory Drive pedestrian bridge noted above:
1) The legendary “Tickle Belly Hill” bridge over Pleasant Run at the north end of Conservatory Drive;
2) The bridge over Pleasant Run on Pagoda Drive near the Burrello Family and Aquatic Center;
3) The span over Bean Creek north of the amphitheater near the arts center and amphitheater parking lot;
4) The bridges at the park’s south end, one just west of the tennis courts and the other on Southern Avenue, just outside the park.
I took pleasure photographing the bridges, as much as how oil painters placed their own impressions of them onto canvas, and I often would indulge in slightly different compositions to emphasize the bridges’ artistic qualities, as you’ll hopefully see in these images.
One such indulgence appears in the first image below in the deliberately skewed shot, taken Dec. 29, 2012, in which I elected to direct focus not only on the stone, but on two repeating patterns – that of the stone and of the snow-on-asphalt spacing. This is the bridge that Conservatory Drive motorists cross to get into the parking lot for the arts center and amphitheater.
The dedication plaque on the far right is dated 1923 and lists Samuel Lewis Shank as mayor, John L. Elliott as city civil engineer and Todd & Reid as contractor. Also listed on the plaque are park commissioners C.A. Bookwalter, Fred Cline, A.M. Maguire and Sarah E. Shank. Locals will recognize Sarah Shank as the name of a golf course not far from the park.
Below that is a side view of this same bridge.
Above and below are pictures, taken at different times, of Tickle Belly Hill, a stone bridge over Pleasant Run at the north end of Conservatory Drive. The one above, taken Nov. 29, 2013, is a perspective shot, looking northwest with Fire Station 29 in the background, while the first image below is a closeup of the bridge’s underbelly, a photo taken Dec. 21, 2012. I’m not sure if the underbelly has any tickly characteristics akin to those of its upside, but I’ll go out on a limb and presume probably not.
The photo above is a head-on perspective of the same Bean Creek pedestrian bridge featured at the top of this post. This view, captured Jan. 8, 2005, enables appreciation of the stone architecture’s arcs and turns. The photo below, taken Dec. 21, 2012, is a midsection structure shot of the stone bridge leading to the tennis courts. This bridge spans Bean Creek near its southern-most point in the park. When standing on this bridge, one can see the Southern Avenue bridge (second photo below) to the south, just outside the park's southern perimeter.
Next up, Chapter 34: Sunken Garden
Previously in the Garfield Park in Pictures series:
No comments:
Post a Comment