![]() ![]() Gross Frederick Law Olmsted Glenwood Park H.W.S. Martin Luther King Park Folwell Park Football Ford Dam Francis A. Tags Alice Dietz Arthur Nichols Bassett's Creek Brownie Lake Bryn Mawr Cavell Park Charles M.I fail to see how the city couldn’t update the park and keep the pool intact.Įnter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email. But some things are priceless and this pool was a gem. I know it was old and I know how expensive it is to repair, and I know the city didn’t make money on it. Each summer we were thankful it was opening again. ![]() I moved after eight summers, to raise my son in a safer area, but we came back every summer on an almost daily basis to swim. I can dive under, lay on the bottom, look up at the sky and see prisms. Weekend mornings were perfect peaceful times to relax, enjoy the sun and water. It could get pretty wild and crazy on hot afternoons. Webber had three diving boards, a shape that allowed for lots of wide open fun. Water parks are fun, but they don’t allow for swimming. But the big pool was always safe.Īfter the city made Rosacker and North Commons into water parks, Webber Pool was the only ‘real’ pool left in the city. I was once in the middle of a shooting with my son in a stroller, returning home from the baby pool near the community center. Most of the time, the park was not safe to be in, especially in the evening. I could sit there at the edge of the pool just thinking about whatever, usually not the swim I was about to do. This was my view as I started my laps each morning. * The latest calculation from Renay Leone, park board real estate attorney, is that the park board still owns about 35 acres of land under the runways at Minneapolis-St. Now we have incredible public spaces for many types of recreation from the most active to the most tranquil - even if the park board no longer owns an airport.* Those spaces, which were created to meet needs, often demands, expressed by us, can’t be maintained without funding. TImes change, needs change and we constantly ask for more and better services at facilities that play central roles in so many of our lives. The memories of Marge and Earl put in context the park board’s current efforts to secure needed funds for maintaining and operating neighborhood parks throughout the city. Parks were for quiet rest and relaxation in beautiful surroundings. When the BPC was created, active recreation - things like running, jumping, climbing, swinging or playing ball games - was not considered appropriate behavior in parks. Stencilled on the back of each chair was “BPC”, which they pretended stood for “Buttered Pop Corn.” In fact, it was the mark of the “Board of Park Commissioners”, the official name of the park board from 1883 until it was changed in 1969 to the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board or MPRB. Marge also recalled the times when she and her siblings would help set up folding chairs for events at North Commons. Earl also recollected a frantic, but successful, effort to keep an oil spill out of Shingle Creek when vandals damaged tanks in the pump house at the Webber Pool. His colleague told of planes buzzing the maintenance building to get someone to turn on the runway lights. Two of her dad’s vivid memories were of an older colleague who told about maintaining the Minneapolis airport in its early days - yes it was owned and operated by the Minneapolis park board. ![]() Marge wrote that she and her siblings remember going to work with their dad and playing all day in the park or ice skating all day during winter vacations. Marge Siers didn’t know when this photo was taken or who took it, but remarked that in her childhood “photo taking cost money so they were reserved for special occasions.” The pool was built originally to be filled with water from the creek, but as the creek became polluted, city water was used. The dam on Shingle Creek next to the old pool and library at Webber Park, where Earl Baker worked. ![]()
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