A Walk in the Park
By Tabita Strimbu
Green space in the city: its importance, its history, and how it’s maintained.
MACON, Ga — Public green spaces occupy an important role in communities. They are enjoyed by communities daily but it is often overlooked how they’ve come to be and how they are maintained.
Green spaces, according to Andrew Silver, a professor at Mercer University and head of the Friends of Tattnall Square Park Board, act as public spaces that allow their visitors to interact with each other horizontally in time.
“Public spaces and green spaces are unique in that you go backwards . . . every time you’re walking through a green space you’re walking beneath trees planted by people with the foresight to plant those trees, so you’re touching their lives and their lives are touching your life,” Silver said.
According to historical records, in June of 1806 the lands east of the Ocmulgee River were ceded to the United States for the creation of the state of Georgia.
The land the city of Macon currently occupies was not mentioned again until December of 1822 when an act was passed by the Georgia Legislature to develop a town on the reserve on the Ocmulgee. The reserve was divided up into 10, 20, and 100 acre lots, which were then further divided.
“This was the furthest you could go up the Ocmulgee, so the entire area was functioning kind of like a green space,” said Muriel McDowell Jackson, the head of the Genealogical and Historical room as well as the Middle Georgia Archives at the Washington Memorial Library.
According to Jackson, there were areas in the downtown squares set aside for livestock to feed and roam. Green spaces in the city originated out of necessity, “they needed to be able to grow food, their animals needed to be able to eat and so it was just normal to have some quote ‘green space’ for the animals,” Jackson said.
Green spaces also took on interesting form: cemeteries. Historical records list the area enclosed between Sixth, Seventh, Cherry, and Poplar streets as an area set apart for churches with graveyards attached. Early city maps list square 35 as the land set aside for churches and cemeteries.
“It was just a natural progression for people to come in and visit the cemetery and stroll through it and enjoy it,” Jackson said.
Those four acres served as a the main public cemetery until 1840 when additional land was needed. This led to the creation of Rose Hill Cemetery.
According to Jackson, Central City Park was the first established park in the city. It was created by Dr. Ambrose Baber, a well known physician, when he set aside land and worked to preserve the forest already in existence in the region as a public health measure. The land Baber set aside became Central City Park.
The creation of Central City Park and the others that followed makes up much of the green space in the city today. Historic parks such as Central City Park are still in use today.
The Macon-Bibb Parks and Beautification as well as Parks and Recreation are in charge of maintaining the city’s green and recreational spaces.
“We rely heavily on community partnerships, whether it’s a friends of such as friends of Washington Park or Tattnall . . . these are groups that are committed to maintaining a park and usually it’s somebody with a vested interest: neighborhoods, people that live, work and play around those parks and call those parks home,” said Sam Kitchens, the Interim Director of Parks and Beautification for Macon-Bibb.
