Funeral for Saint Paul's Central Park Tomorrow

[Central Park, 1960.]

I'm attached to Saint Paul's Central Park, a late Victorian downtown bourgeois park (like Irvine Park and Lafayette Park) that has been in a vegetative coma since around 1970, trapped atop a parking ramp behind the Centennial Office Building next to the State Capitol.

The park has a storied history that actually connects to a distant ancestor of mine, one of the branch of Lindekes that made it rich working for James J. Hill during the rapid growth of the railroads in the northwest. The park was started as an attempt to create a wealthy enclave at the edge of the walkable downtown core of Saint Paul, but was quickly eclipsed once the streetcar system catalyzed growth and expansion of the city in the 1880s.

[Central Park in its later years.]

The last tiny scrap of the park reminds me of nothing more than the last wedge of bifurcated donut in a box of shared by Minnesotans, continually cut in half again and again until there's nothing left but a gesture. So, too, the old Central Park was gradually eliminated throughout the mid-years of the 20th century, until there's but a scrap of green surrounded by parked cars in all directions, a tiny concrete-encased bit of geometric grass topped by a single tree [chef's kiss!] next to which a dirty pebbled ashtray bears the rusty plaque, "CENTRAL PARK" like a jester's sneer.

[The only commemoration.]

The park is slated for final elimination later this year, like pulling the plug on a elderly lost cause with no hope. Perhaps it's for the best, and the attempt to save a scrap of parkland (part of the original lease agreement for the parking ramp in the first place) was always a bit of a joke. But it still makes me sad, particularly as a connoisseur of parking lot parks.

That's why I'm throwing a "funeral" for the park, based on the funeral vigil for the Uptown Arby's. Compared to the Arby's, hardly anyone noticed or appreciated the last scrap of Central Park. It's basically a postage stamp of grass surrounded by modernist brutalism...

But still. Someone should commemorate the park, which was began in the early 1880s and hosted the first ever Saint Paul Ice Palace, as well as countless kids playing, promenades, high school student hangout sessions, and who knows what else throughout its 130 year life. It was eventually eclipsed by State Government, and fell victim to the unstoppable bulldozer of progress, but I appreciated it and its connection to a forgotten past, when Capitol Heights was a wealthy enclave looking down on the gritty, diverse, and booming city of Saint Paul.

See you there!

[Bike tag.]

[See Facebook invite here.]

What: Funeral service for Central Park
When: 5:45 pm, for about a half hour
Why: Because it's almost not there
Where: Go to the stairs by the parking ramp off MLK Boulevard, between Cedar Street and Central Park East (!)
Who: Anyone

[More Central Park photos below.]

[Central park at lower right, c. 1955.]