Wade Park (Cleveland park)

Wade Park is a park in the University Circle neighborhood of Cleveland, Ohio. An idyllic swath of land in one of Cleveland's busiest neighborhoods, the park was built on land donated by Jeptha Wade with the intention of using part of the property building for an art museum. ^[1] It's most prominent feature is the Cleveland Museum of Art and the adjacent Wade Park Lagoon.^[2] While not technically a historical landmark on its own, the park falls within the eponymous Wade Park historical district and essentially serves the landscape for most of the buildings included in the registry entry.

Established on the land donated to the city by Jeptha Wade in 1882, Wade Park today largely serves as a museum campus for the Cleveland Museum of Art, as well as several other Cleveland cultural institutions. One of the most prominent features of the park -- and of University Circle -- is the Wade Lagoon. The lagoon is situated on the south end of Wade Park, in front of the museum. Bounded by East Boulevard on the west, Martin Luther King Jr. Drive on the east and Euclid Avenue on the south, the lagoon provides a tranquil retreat as well as a home for fish, which are mainly ornamental koi.^[3]

The park also provides an outdoor gallery, with part of the museum's holdings being showcased in the Wade Park Fine Arts Garden. The bulk of this collection are located between the original 1916 main entrance to the building and the lagoon. Highlights of this sizable collection of public sculpture include the large cast of Rodin's The Thinker, which sits atop of the museums main staircase. The statue has a unique but troubled history. Partially destroyed in a 1970 bombing (allegedly by The Weathermen),^[4] the statue has been left in its unrestored condition. The reasoning for not repairing it stems from the close involvement of Rodin in its original casting. Today, the damage—which is notated on the plaque mounted at the base of the statue's pedestal—has come to define the casting as unique among the more than twenty original large castings.

Other prominent sculptures in the garden include Chester Beach's 1927 Fountain of the Waters; a monument to the Polish expatriate and American Revolutionary War-hero Tadeusz Kościuszko; and the 1928 bronze statuary sundial by Frank Jirouch, Night Passing the Earth to Day, which sits across Wade Lagoon from the museum, near the park's entrance on Euclid Avenue. Oliver Hazard Perry, the naval officer who led the American fleet at the Battle of Lake Erie, is also honored with a statue adjacent the lagoon.

Wade Park divides two sections of the city's larger Rockefeller Park: on its northwestern border along Martin Luther King Jr. Dr., and directly across University Circle to the southeast on Euclid Ave.

Attractions

• The Cleveland Museum of Art - Located at the southern entrance of the park along Euclid Avenue, the museum sits behind Wade Lagoon.
• The Cleveland Museum of Natural History - Located in the northwestern corner of the park^[5]
• Cleveland Botanical Garden - Founded in 1930 as the Garden Center of Greater Cleveland, the garden, which underwent an extensive makeover in 2003, is situated on East Boulevard in the northeastern portion of the park.^[6]

References