Wooldridge Park, also known as Wooldridge Square, is an urban park in

downtown ''Downtown'' is a term primarily used in North America by English speakers to refer to a city's sometimes commercial, cultural and often the historical, political and geographic heart. It is often synonymous with its central business distric ...

Austin, Texas. The park consists of a

city block A city block, residential block, urban block, or simply block is a central element of urban planning and urban design. A city block is the smallest group of buildings that is surrounded by streets, not counting any type of thoroughfare within t ...

containing a natural basin whose sides slope inward to form an

amphitheater An amphitheatre (British English) or amphitheater (American English; both ) is an open-air venue used for entertainment, performances, and sports. The term derives from the ancient Greek ('), from ('), meaning "on both sides" or "around" and ...

with a bandstand at its center. The park was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1979.

History

Wooldridge Park is one of four original public squares designated in downtown Austin in the 1839 Waller Plan for the city drawn up by Edwin Waller, but it lay vacant for seventy years. In an era of civic pride in 1909, however, Austin Mayor

A. P. Wooldridge Alexander Penn Wooldridge, usually just A. P. Wooldridge (1847–1930), was the mayor of Austin, Texas from 1909 to 1919. Wooldridge Park and Wooldridge Elementary School are named after him. He led the campaign in the early 1890s to build the ...

sponsored the cleaning of the square and the construction of a classical revival-style gazebo for public engagements, which officially opened the same year. The park was dedicated on June 18, 1909 to considerable aplomb with dedicatory address being made by the Mayor. Wooldridge Park is the only one of the original public squares to have retained its original function; the other three underwent various uses over time, hosting parking lots, a fire station, a church, a museum, and businesses. The view of the Texas State Capitol from Wooldridge Park is one of the Capitol View Corridors protected under state and local law from obstruction by tall buildings since 1983.

References

External links

{{National Register of Historic Places in Austin, Texas Parks in Austin, Texas National Register of Historic Places in Austin, Texas Parks on the National Register of Historic Places in Texas Amphitheaters on the National Register of Historic Places Amphitheaters in Texas Event venues on the National Register of Historic Places in Texas 1909 establishments in Texas City of Austin Historic Landmarks