Old City Park

The park once carried another man's name. The City of Dallas park-name archive says it was Sullivan Park from 1936 to 1941, for Daniel Sullivan (1858 to 1926), a water commissioner from 1907 to 1911. The archive adds that City Park was the birthplace of the city's water department, and calls it the first land the city specifically described as a municipal park, acquired in 1876. The plaque's springs fit that history, since it says they supplied the city's water.

What the plaque says

Old City Park Indian tribes were once attracted to this park site by a series of natural springs, which became known as Browder Springs after Edward C. Browder (1825 - 1875) acquired the property in 1845. The springs figured in legislation which made Dallas the intersection of the Texas & Pacific and Houston & Texas Central Railroads in 1871 and launched the town's rapid growth. On July 4, 1876, to honor the American Centennial, ten acres near the springs were set aside as Dallas' first municipal park. "City Park" was also known as "Eakins Park" because J. J. Eakin originally owned the land. By 1885 nine more acres, including the Browder Springs property, were added. The springs supplied water to the city, and the park grounds provided a center for leisure activities and group gatherings. A neighborhood of elegant homes, called "The Cedars," grew up nearby. The city's first zoo was here; fountains, greenhouses, tennis courts, a playground and a wading pool were later added. In 1936 the site was renamed "Sullivan Park" for Dallas Water Commissioner Dan L. Sullivan, but it remained popularly known as "Old City Park." In 1966 the Dallas Park Board agreed to allow the Dallas County Heritage Society to revitalize the park as a "heritage center" of restored historic structures. (1976)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Dallas Heritage Village at Old City Park — steps away
  Dallas's first city park, laid out around Browder's Spring in 1876, now a museum of historic buildings moved here from across North Texas, among them Millermore, a cotton planter's mansion.
• Dallas Museum of Art — 1.3 mi
  A city art museum that began as the Dallas Art Association in 1903, grew up in Fair Park, and has stood in the Arts District since 1984 under a forty-foot barrel vault.
• The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza — 1.3 mi
  A plow-company warehouse of 1903, identified by the Warren Commission as the building Oswald fired from, now a museum on its sixth and seventh floors above Dealey Plaza.
• African American Museum, Dallas — 1.4 mi
  Founded in 1974 at Bishop College, a free Fair Park museum holding the Sepia photograph archive, African art and A. Maceo Smith's papers, and the story of the Hall of Negro Life.

More markers nearby

• Cherokees in Dallas — steps away
• Browder Springs — steps away
• City of Dallas — 0.6 mi
• John Jay Good — 0.7 mi