Rockefeller Park and Cleveland Cultural Gardens Historic District

Rockefeller Park is a long urban park in Cleveland's Doan Brook valley, laid out from 1894 in the Victorian Picturesque style. A winding drive, now Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, runs beside the brook beneath stone-veneered bridges that carry Wade Park, Superior and St. Clair Avenues. The park also has stone walls along the brook, a lagoon, rock outcroppings, lawns and groves of hardwood trees, plus a 1930s greenhouse complex at the north end. Between Superior and St. Clair Avenues lie the Cleveland Cultural Gardens, built mainly between 1916 and 1941. Each garden has its own design reflecting an ethnic group, using terraces, walls, plantings and sculpture. They were created to promote ethnic pride, international cooperation and world peace. The district was listed for its park landscape and its commemoration of cultural diversity. Although sculpture has been lost, plantings have changed and some walls were replaced, the original layout and the dominant stonework from 1894 to 1954 remain.