Nothing compares to visiting an Olmsted park in person.
Olmsted’s original plans, as detailed and beautifully executed as they are, can only tell you so much about what one of his parks looks like today. When I joined the staff of the Olmsted Network back in January, I hoped it might afford me a chance to discover new parks and to be surprised by park secrets only locals know about. I haven’t been disappointed. Last month, I accepted an invitation to visit New Bedford, Massachusetts.
Richard Leary, the president of Friends of Buttonwood Park, met me outside the Buttonwood Senior Center, a brick building near the center of the park at the edge of the Buttonwood Pond, a defining feature of the landscape. He had agreed to take me on a tour of the 97-acre park. For a hot Wednesday morning in July, there were already a lot of people strolling in but even more ducks and geese.
As I admired the pond, Richard explained that he grew up only a few blocks from the park.
When he was a boy, there was ice skating on the pond each winter and the brick building was called the “Warming House.” It had a fireplace, and it’s where you went after skating to warm up. It has been years since there was skating, though. The pond’s popularity as a favorite fishing spot has also declined.
The pond is now choked with lily pads in the summertime, and in many places, the edges have grown indistinct with reeds. Indeed, it was a far different pond from what the Olmsted firm found when invited to New Bedford in the 1890s. In his plan, landscape architect Charles Eliot recommended that the city remove the dam and expand the pond into the southern half of the park. It was one of the many suggestions not acted upon then but getting another look at now by the Friends of Buttonwood Park and local environmental organizations.
Concerns about aging sewerage systems have created a renewed interest in Buttonwood Brook that feeds the pond and the stream that runs from it. The Buzzards Bay Coalition recently announced over $3 million to help clean the brook.
As their press release from October 2023 states, “The Buttonwood-to-Bay Project seeks to improve water quality in both the brook and the bay. The project’s multi-phased approach includes data collection, analysis and planning and implementing on-the-ground restoration projects.”
What will happen is still not known for certain, but Richard said there is talk of dredging the pond. A consultancy firm has recommended that to improve water flow and promote wildlife, they might turn the pond into a network of small islands.
Wanting me to see everything, we headed along Fuller Parkway, the main east-west road through the park. The road crosses the dam creating the pond and is lined with beautiful old trees. Unfortunately, there’s also a chain-link fence on either side. Richard later sent me photos of the ornate iron fence that it replaced.
The western side of the park is the longest, and it’s lined with a mix of old and new trees, creating a shady canopy for the paths that run the park’s circumference. As we headed north along Bronwell Avenue, Richard showed me the oldest cherry tree still in the park. Planted in 1931, the crooked tree is the last of 60 saplings planted by the pond as the first effort of the newly formed Garden Club of Buzzards Bay. In recent weeks, the Friends have added more cherry trees to fill out the grove. He assured me the blossoms were brilliant and fragrant in the springtime.
The northern part of the park is heavily wooded. The brook gets lost in the overgrowth. Richard showed me where a bridge had once crossed the water to a path that ran through the woods.
“I used to cut through here all the time with my friends,” he said. Now, only the cement base of the bridge remains.
The environmental efforts to improve the brook will help clear its banks and improve its flow. The Friends’ North Trails project will restore the bridge and create a brookside walking path. Later, a path is planned to run along the perimeter of the pond. It will include boardwalk sections and viewing stations. The large patch of lawn in the northwest corner of the park will be turned into a rain garden as part of those water management efforts.
Several years ago, the Friends launched a fitness initiative and fundraising campaign called Buttonwood on the Move. They’ve already relocated and built popular new tennis courts and basketball courts. Next on the list are efforts to raise funding to clear the forest of invasives and add trails.
Kempton Street runs along the northern side of the park. Residential roads are on every other side of the park, but Kempton is commercial with fast food chains and a lot of traffic. During the Great Depression, the WPA improved a magnificent wall along this edge of the park. It’s not original to the Eliot plan, but along with providing a welcome relief from the traffic, it’s in keeping with Olmsted design principles.
In Charles Eliot’s plan the park was rectangular. The contours of today’s park are similar, but roughly around the same time the northern wall was erected, a new neighborhood was built that took a big bite out of the northeast corner. Leading me around the park’s edge, Richard pointed out his childhood home down one of these intruding streets.
“Growing up, it was like the park was my backyard. I spent a lot of my free time here,” he said. Though he feels differently about caged animals now, he admitted there was something special about waking up to the sounds of elephants, peacocks and other exotic animals in the park’s zoo. The Buttonwood Park Zoo predates the park.
In 1894, the year before Eliot submitted his plan, a zoo was opened on the grounds. (It’s the nation’s seventh oldest.) Looking up the park online, the zoo always appears at the top of the search results, and the signage for miles around New Bedford all emphasize it. So, heading there, I was worried the zoo may dominate the landscape. But as we stood on the eastern side of the park, overlooking the sweeping meadows there, I still hadn’t seen any signs of pachyderm.
Instead, Richard took me into a small public library occupying a corner of the park. Ensconced in hedges, trees, and a reading garden, the library also acts as a meeting place for the Friends. On the wall of the meeting room is a large, framed image of Charles Eliot’s plan.
In the air conditioning, we discussed how while the 1895 plan was essentially ignored for a very long time, in recent decades the Friends have renewed a close observance to and appreciation for Olmsted’s principles. Planting new trees and installing more benches are on-going efforts in that direction, but he also admitted there were certain additions he was trying to resist.
There are many monuments throughout the park, including a towering statue in the center known as the Barnard Monument, which honors the “sturdy whalemen” of New Bedford. All the monuments are well maintained with plantings, but Richard recognized Olmsted’s stance on emphasizing nature over statuary and said there has been a moratorium on new monuments that has been generally observed since the late 1980s.
Resuming our walk along Rockdale Avenue on the east side of the park, we passed the Great Lawn, the site of a large fair each July. Further on, Richard pointed to a large baseball diamond that is seldom used now. He said he dreams of turning it into a space for non-competitive activity—some kind of playground for adults and older kids.
The woods at the southern tip of the park are so thick and wild, I spotted a deer in them, not far from the zoo entrance. The trees here mostly act as an enclosure for the zoo, hiding it from the neighborhood across the street. I appreciated the zoo’s compact size and restrained parking lot. A quick peek inside the front gates revealed how the Buttonwood Brook is also used as a feature in the bison enclosure.
Beyond the elephants (which are freely visible from the children’s playground), our walk ended with the small but vibrant arboretum the Friends have planted that’s adjacent nearby sensory garden. Richard left me to attend park business, and I took a quiet walk through a more formal garden and wooded path along the brook that drained from the dam.
Overall, I’d say Buttonwood Park is a shining example of a park that gets along well with its neighbors and has managed to thrive despite all the challenges facing parks today. Buttonwood Park has struck a successful balance with its zoo, leaving ample space for active and passive recreation and the enjoyment of nature. The hopeful evolution of the pond and northern woods could greatly enhance an already lush park and bring it closer to the Olmsted ideal.
Photos by Mark Roessler.
