Tift Park

Tift Park is a 31-acre city park about a mile north of downtown Albany, Georgia. The city bought the land in 1909 as part of a beautification campaign and made it Albany's first park. A 1910 naming contest honored Nelson Tift, the city's founder. In 1912 Atlanta landscape architect Otto Katzenstein designed a rustic plan with native plantings, curved carriage drives, a wading pool, a ball field and playgrounds. Live Oaks planted along the drives between 1910 and 1920 and the curving line of Monroe Street still survive. The park reflects the nationwide City Beautiful movement at a local scale. It is also tied to civil rights history. In 1963, after protests by Albany's Black community against segregated public facilities, the city declared the park's 1950s swimming pool and tennis courts surplus and sold them to a private citizen to avoid integration. The period of significance runs from the 1909 land purchase to that 1963 sale.