SPOKANE, Wash. — Go for a drive through the Rockwood neighborhood on Spokane’s South Hill and you will pass what look like giant grass medians of some sort.
They’re actually four micro-parks known as the Olmstead Triangle Parks. The parks aren’t very big, but the creators wanted to make sure people had a park or green space near their homes.
Garrett Jones with Spokane Parks and Recreation said back in the early 1900s, developer Jay Graves hired brothers John and Fredrick Olmsted to design the streetscape, treescape and the islands that are part of the Rockwood neighborhood. He said Spokane’s first park board president, Aubrey White, brought the brothers here after running into them in western Washington and showing them around Spokane.
The Olmsted Brothers landscape firm was very influential at the time, established by the sons of famed landscape architect Fredrick Law Olmsted. Fredrick designed New York’s Central Park.
The firm designed hundreds of parks, estates and college campuses nationwide.
Jones said in 1908 the Olmsted brothers presented a plan to the Spokane Parks Board to add more city parks and parkways.
Part of that plan included those four micro-parks, created in 1910. They’re located at 25th and Garfield, 26th and Garfield, 26th and Scott and Plateau and Garfield.
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