Park Map
Photo courtesy of Mark Krancer
Exploring Memorial Park
Explore Memorial Park’s featured landmarks to learn more about their history and about the Memorial Park Association’s mission to preserve, enhance and promote Memorial Park. The park is owned and operated by the City of Jacksonville, Department of Parks and Recreation. There are many paths to access in Memorial Park’s almost 6 acres. The wide concrete walkway in the shape of an oval measures one quarter of a mile (four times around the oval = 1 mile).
Instructions
Tap or click on the numbers on the map to learn more about the park’s features.
1 History Of Memorial Park
Memorial Park, born out of Jacksonville citizens’ deep gratitude to those who served in The Great War (World War I), for almost 100 years has been a shared public treasure for the entire Northeast Florida community. In November 1918 George Hardee of the Jacksonville Rotary Club proposed a memorial to honor Floridians who died in service during WWI. Paid for by the citizens of greater Jacksonville, the new commemorative public park opened on Christmas Day 1924. In October 2017 the United States World War One Centennial Commission designated Memorial Park’s sculpture “Spiritualized Life” by renowned sculptor C. Adrian Pillars as a WWI Centennial Memorial. In November 2017 the U.S. Department of the Interior added Memorial Park to the National Park Service’s National Register of Historic Places.
2 Ninah Cummer Monument
The Citizens Committee, along with various civic leaders and philanthropists, such as Morgan Gress, Edith Gray, Mary Cline, and Ninah May Holden Cummer, planned the park’s development. Mrs. Cummer (1875-1958), a passionate gardener, was active in several charitable groups. As a leading light of Riverside society and inspired by the gardens of Europe, she gathered a group of 20 friends in her Riverside mansion on the St. Johns River on March 25, 1922, to organize a garden club to create a more beautiful city. The result was the Garden Club of Jacksonville, Inc., founded in April 1924. Subsequently, Mrs. Cummer willed her home, with its stunning gardens and cultural treasures, to be turned into a museum. The Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens, built on the site of the home of Arthur and Ninah Cummer, opened its doors November 10, 1961.
3 The Garden House
Memorial Park Association (MPA) organizes various opportunities for the community to become involved in park maintenance, which is staged from the Garden House. Follow us on Facebook @memparkjax to learn about opportunities to get involved or click here.
4 St. Johns River
The St. Johns River is one of three in the world that runs north. The longest river in Florida, it is significant for commercial and recreational use. For 310 miles it winds through or borders 12 counties and is nearly three miles across in places. Seawater and freshwater mix at the lower St. Johns River estuary, creating brackish (part salt, part fresh) water that is home to a variety of fish, including sharks, porpoises, redfish, and rays in the north, while largemouth bass, sheepshead, crappie, bluegills, shellcrackers, and catfish are found in the freshwater farther south.
5 Adopt The Park Sponsors
The Memorial Park Association’s Adopt The Park sponsorship program was launched in May 2015. The program funds the Landscape & Grounds Committee’s annual expenses to enhance and beautify Memorial Park.
6 Spiritualized Life, Charles Adrian Pillars
Born and trained in the Midwest, Charles Adrian Pillars (1870–1937) was an accomplished and highly successful sculptor who settled in northeast Florida in 1894. Pillars was a student of the Beaux Arts tradition of dramatic, romantic, classically-inspired, and often allegorical sculpture that dominated much civic art in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He studied under renowned Chicago sculptor Lorado Taft, creator of the monumental Columbus Fountain at Washington’s Union Station and a number of famous works in Chicago and elsewhere. In his Spiritualized Life composition Pillars made powerful use of the Beaux Arts style to tell a moving story of the true spirit of those who served in WWI. He wrote that he “desired this memorial to present the idea of life, its struggle and its victory.” While striving to make a composition visualizing this, I found a poem by Alan Seeger, a soldier- victim of the war. At once I saw the typical spirit of the boys who went overseas – saw with their eyes a world in the insane grip of greed and ambition, caught in the ceaseless swirl of selfishness, hate and covetousness, ever struggling against submergence. I saw these boys giving up their homes, sweethearts, wives and mothers to go overseas and through the supreme sacrifice make secure the happiness and safety of their loved ones. With this vivid picture in mind, I constructed a sphere to represent the world, engirdled with masses of swirling water typifying the chaotic earth forces. In this surging mass of waters, I shaped human figures, all striving to rise above this flood, struggling for mere existence. Last, surmounting these swirling waters, with their human freight, I placed the winged figure of Youth, representative of spiritual life, the spirit of these boys which was the spirit of victory. Immortality attained not through death, but deeds; not a victory of brute force, but of spirit. This figure of Youth Sacrificed wears his crown of laurels won. He holds aloft an olive branch, the emblem of peace. While Spiritualized Life is probably C.A. Pillars’ best-known surviving work, he went on to complete a number of commissions before his death, including a bronze figure of William Boyd Barnett, founder of Barnett Bank, completed for the bank’s 50th anniversary in 1931; coincidentally, the Barnett family sponsored the restoration of Memorial Park’s twin entry gates on Riverside Avenue in 1994, in memory of William Boyd Barnett’s great-grandson William Randle Barnett.
7 Plaque Honoring Florida Fallen
Memorial Park commemorates all Floridians who died in the Great War (World War I) and whose names were originally inscribed on parchment scrolls, sealed in a lead box within a bronze box and buried beneath the plaza in front of the fountain. Damaged by Hurricane Irma in September 2017, the original scrolls are preserved and available for viewing at the Jacksonville Public Library downtown. Copies of the scrolls, including the more than 500 additional names discovered since 2018, will be buried beneath the plaque in 2024. For a list of The Florida Fallen, click here.
8 Eagle Sculptures
Diane LaFond Insetta, an internationally known Jacksonville artist, created the two bronze eagle sculptures flanking the entrance to the fountain and the Life sculpture. To replace the original coquina eagle sculptures that were installed in the 1920s, the bronze eagles were given to the City of Jacksonville by Memorial Park Association on May 29, 2011. To see how the artist created the eagles, click here to watch a video.
9 Rotary Marker
The Rotary Club of Jacksonville was instrumental in creating Memorial Park. To commemorate the Jacksonville club’s 100th anniversary in 2018, the Rotary Club created this marker to help us all remember the sacrifices and heroism of World War I soldiers. The design focuses on the Doughboy coming home from the war, proud of what he has done and of what our country did in The Great War. The monument curves, like a soldier’s chest swelled with pride.
10 Olmsted Bros.
The nationally known firm of Olmsted Brothers Landscape Architects (Brookline, MA) designed the park to serve as a welcoming urban oasis as well as an appropriate setting for the memorial sculpture. The firm was run by stepbrothers John Charles Olmsted (1852-1920) and Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. (1870-1957), sons of the eminent landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted (1822-1903), designer of New York’s Central Park, Asheville’s Biltmore Estate gardens, and Boston’s “emerald necklace.” Along with providing an appropriate, emotionally powerful setting that would show the Spiritualized Life sculpture to its best advantage, the firm sought to create an inviting and beautiful space for the use and enjoyment of all of Jacksonville’s citizens. The park was designed to be as simple as possible and to provide a place for the public to come and seek as much rest and peace of body and mind as is possible in a small area close to streets and traffic.
11 Flora & Fauna
Memorial Park is home to over 40 Live Oak trees. There are also Cabbage Palms (native to the area), exotic Date Palms and Coontie Palms (also native). Spring blooms include Japanese Tulip Trees; Plum Trees; Red Buds; Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow; Sweet Olive; Agapanthus; Amaryllis, and the most prevalent: Azaleas. Fall blooms include Plumbago and Crepe Myrtle. Winter blooms include Camellias. Year-round greens include Podocarpus and Viburnum. Memorial Park’s most common animals are the ground squirrels. The park is also home to many North Florida birds and waterfowl.