Bowring Park in St. John's was
officially declared open on
July 15, 1914 by His Royal Highness the Duke of
Connaught. At the opening, the Duke hoped that "May it ever be a source of pleasure and enjoyment to the citizens of St. John's and to Newfoundland in general."
These 1930s-era photos are from a collection donated by Ruth Noseworthy Green, and for the most part feature the family of Arthur Taylor, of Southside, St. John's.
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| Arthur Taylor, 1932 |
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| Bowring Park, 1932. |
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| Max and his brother Arthur Taylor in Bowring Park, 1936. |
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| Arthur Taylor, 1932, Bowring Park Boat Pool and Wharf. |
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| Bowring Park Boat Pool, 1932. |
The "Boat Pool" or "Boat Lake" is now known as the Duck Pond. It was designed by landscape architect Rudolf H. Cochius and completed in June, 1913. If you look very closely at the centre of the above photo, you can make out a small octagonal building:
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| Bowring Park Boat Pool, 1932, detail, sharpened. |
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Could this structure be an early duck house? In 1946, the park became home to six white swans, and a Chinoiserie-style octagonal Swan House was constructed, which you can see clearly in the photo below of the Boat Pond from 1946, taken from the
History of Bowring Park.
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| Boat Pond, 1946, possibly by TB Hayward. |
Do you have an early photo of Bowring Park? Email me at
dale@heritagenl.ca
1 comment:
That was definitely a swan house , I remember it from the 1960's and rowing around the duck pond, it was a little deeper then.
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