{"nrhp_refnum":"94001490","name":"Thornden Park","other_names":[],"category":"site","location":{"address":"Roughly bounded by Ostrom Ave., Madison St., Beech St., Bristol Pl., Greenwood Pl. and Clarendon St.","address_restricted":false,"city":"Syracuse","county":"Onondaga County","state":"NY","lat":43.04061407550006,"lon":-76.12587596124484,"geom_source":"nps_gis"},"listed_date":"1994-12-29","is_nhl":false,"nhl_designated_date":null,"areas_of_significance":["Community Planning and Development","Entertainment/Recreation","Landscape Architecture"],"significance_levels":["local"],"summary":{"what_it_is":"Thornden Park is a 76-acre public park in Syracuse, Onondaga County, New York, southeast of downtown. It was laid out in the 1920s within the grounds of the earlier Davis estate, which the city bought in 1921.","why_significant":"The nomination presents it as a Reform Era park of the early twentieth century, designed to fit within an earlier Romantic pleasure ground landscape. It keeps rustic stone buildings and structures from the 1920s and 1930s, gardens, and landforms from the estate period. Its estate grounds were among the most extensive residential landscapes in the Syracuse area.","narrative":"Thornden Park occupies 76 acres on a ridge overlooking the Onondaga Valley, downtown Syracuse and Onondaga Lake. Before the city bought it in 1921, the land was the Thornden estate of Major Alexander Davis, whose Tudor-style house stood amid manicured lawns, rare imported trees, greenhouses, farm fields and the first golf course in Syracuse. The park designed in the 1920s kept much of this earlier pleasure ground landscape, including its rolling topography, specimen trees and a surviving outbuilding. New features followed the ideals of the Reform Era park: a rose garden and pavilion from 1925, the Elon P. Stewart Standpipe, a bathhouse, a semicircular amphitheater from 1930, and a limestone field house from 1933 built with relief-program funding. Rustic stone stairs, walls and entry piers add to the character. The park is counted as locally significant for combining an estate landscape with early twentieth-century municipal park design.","period_of_significance":null,"architect_builder":null,"architectural_style":"Other: Pleasure Ground; Reform Era Park","criteria":[],"status_note":"Currently used as a public park with gardens and outdoor recreation. Condition ranges from excellent to poor, with some buildings altered and the estate outbuilding in fair to poor repair.","vacant_flag":false,"machine_generated":true,"model":"claude-sonnet-5-5","prompt_version":"v1.0-2026-10-29","generated_at":"2026-10-29 02:51:51.017671-05","source_pdf":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/lz/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_NY/94001490.pdf"},"photo":{"url_800":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/94001490/6956088897-800.webp","url_1600":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/94001490/6956088897-1600.webp","licence":"CC BY-SA 4.0","author":"DASonnenfeld","credit_html":"<a href=\"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Thornden-Park-2016-07.jpg\" rel=\"noopener\">DASonnenfeld</a>, <a href=\"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0\" rel=\"license noopener\">CC BY-SA 4.0</a>, via Wikimedia Commons","source_page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Thornden-Park-2016-07.jpg"},"district":{"nrhp_refnum":"100011439","name":"Westcott-University Neighborhood Historic District","url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/districts/new-york/westcott-university-neighborhood-historic-district-100011439/"},"sources":{"nps_snapshot_date":"2026-05-22","nara_catalog":"https://catalog.archives.gov/id/75314083","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thornden_Park","wikidata":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7796361"},"indexable":true,"url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/new-york/onondaga-county/thornden-park-94001490/"}