A Pocket Park Hat Trick?

After cleaning up Moyamensing Point and Beck Park, residents have set their sights on Mary Street Park

Twenty-five years ago, the intersection at 2nd and Christian streets was looking rough. Cars were directed by a traffic light that many neighbors saw as an impractical eyesore, and the little asphalt island between Moyamensing and 2nd Street—what we now call Moyamensing Point—was an unkempt slab with no champion to care for it. Now, it’s a beautiful amenity. Volunteers were key to the efforts, and they plan to use the roadmap they’ve created at both Moyamensing Point and Beck Park to clean up a third location, this one called Mary Street Park, which is at Front and League streets but goes by its historic name.

Starting small, but with a big vision

The key steps to creating any pocket park are having the vision, sharing it, and getting the support of volunteers, donors, the City, and then some.

In 1995, QVNA volunteer David O’Donnell saw pocket park potential where others could only see blight. David shared his vision with QVNA volunteers Marge Schernecke and Alan Hunter and together their vision was to add natural beauty and pedestrian safety to the meeting point of Moyamensing, 2nd and Christian Streets. Within a year, the committee raised $4,000 from neighbors, developed an action plan, a garden design, and even a plan for a traffic island to help pedestrians safely cross 2nd street. By the end of 2001, the committee had been endorsed by Councilman DiCicco and received state funding through Senator Vince Fumo. In 2002, with funding secured and volunteers lined up, the real work began on what would become Moyamensing Point.

Creating Friends

It’s one thing to create a pocket park, it’s quite another to give it the continuing care it deserves. In 2005, John Weir launched Friends of Moyamensing Point, an energetic group of volunteers who tend to the park year around. Soon after the Friends group started, four trees were planted and wrought-iron fencing was installed to circle the garden. Quality brick sidewalks and new benches made the little island more inviting. They even added a rose pot on the north side of Christian Street.

Their vision moves north

In the meantime, not long after the committee finished its work on the Point, its attention was drawn to what had become a more dire renovation project a stone’s throw to the north.

Beck Park, on 2nd Street (the one residents might remember from its polar bear statues), had long been neglected, and the tangles of rose bushes had often been used as a hideout for drug use, O’Donnell said. Fortunately, since the committee had secured state funds to develop Moyamensing Point, it still had $2,000 from its original fundraising efforts to invest in another neighborhood improvement. Once again, Queen Village volunteers were recruited by the committee to clean up, fix up, and plant perennials in Beck Park.

With the used needles gone and the bramble cleared away, Beck Park’s tranquility returned. What was next? Queen Village volunteers formed The Friends of Beck Park to give continuing year-round care for this small pocket park with the new brick planters and young trees.

What Friends are doing now

In 2018, Friends of Beck Park, led by Chair Ed Snyder, was awarded a QVNA Community Grant to repair the aging brick planters and replace sidewalks ruptured by tree roots. We look forward to a safer, more beautiful park later this year.

In January, John Wier met with Councilman Mark Squilla to have Moyamensing Point added to the city’s street plan so that a water line can be installed by the city. Fingers crossed that the Friends will have running water for their pocket park garden this summer.

Making Mary Street Park a reality

Given the success and experience of the volunteers involved, when word started to spread that there might be a sale of the land containing Mary Street Park, O’Donnell again began leafleting the neighborhood. He hopes that Neighborhood Gardens Trust (NGT) will be able to acquire the park from the city and designate it for preservation.

Before accepting responsibility for such a space (which includes getting insurance), NGT requires an applica-tion process demonstrating that a core group of neighbors have made a long-term commitment to the park’s maintenance. “Stewardship” is the operative word.

“Typically we would want to see it go through a couple of growing seasons, with maintenance shared by a group of people and some sort of leadership structure,” explains Jenny Greenberg, NGT’s executive director.

If NGT decides to acquire Mary Street Park, the next phase will involve hiring landscape architects, which often necessitates some guidance from the city, O’Donnell said. He hopes a water source can be extended to the park to assist with landscaping maintenance, though he is not sure yet how much work that will entail. ■