The History of LOVE Park

On the drawing board in 1682, the area that was to become known as LOVE Park, stood at the center of William Penn's City of Brotherly Love. His vision would soon attract settlers from around the world drawn by Penn's notions of tolerance, design, and community.

Slightly over 300 years later that same space, now known as LOVE Park, drew skateboarders from around the world attracted by tolerance, design, and community. Many of those who came remained, attracted by a city open to a new type of settler.

Yet in 2002, the wheels of government would silence the wheels of the skateboarders.

In 1932 Edmund Bacon, Philadelphia's future city planner designed "A Civic Center for Philadelphia" as his architecture thesis at Cornell. One of the features of the plan was a park at the southeastern terminus of the city's great boulevard, the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. Bacon could not have anticipated skateboarding when he designed LOVE Park, yet his space became one of the world's most famous skating spots, and came to represent Philadelphia's image, worldwide. That is, until Philadelphia's Mayor John Street banned skateboarding in 2002. This essay describes the history of LOVE Park, dating back to its roots in the Benjamin Franklin Parkway and even further back to William Penn's original vision for his city.