Lowell Park

Lowell Park is a 200-acre public park on bluffs and ravines above the Rock River, just north of downtown Dixon, Illinois. Its development began around 1907, with plans by landscape architect Arthur Coleman Comey and later supervision by O. C. Simonds, who directed park work for about two decades. Roads wind down through native forest to a lower terrace of picnic areas and the riverfront. The park holds an unusual collection of buildings for a municipal park, including Woodcote, a Dutch Colonial Revival caretaker's house, a 1922 bathhouse, a well house, and seven shelters of locally quarried limestone, many built by WPA workers in the 1930s. Stone entrance pillars, fireplaces and retaining walls share the same horizontal limestone character. The park was designed in the American Romantic manner, keeping built features subordinate to natural scenery. The nomination notes it was one of the earliest Illinois parks created to preserve a natural area of unusual beauty, and that its craftsmanship and setting define its identity.