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The
area which is now known as Elizabeth Park was once owned by Charles M.
Pond. Mr. Pond was a wealthy industrialist and statesman whose career
included being a Director of the New York,
New Haven & Hartford Railroad, Hartford Hospital, and the Phoenix
Fire Insurance Company. Mr. Pond was also President of the Hartford Trust
Company and he was
Treasurer of the State of Connecticut.
When Mr. Pond passed away, he
willed his estate to the City of Hartford with the stipulations that it be used as a
horticultural park and that it be named for his wife, Elizabeth, who had died a few years
earlier.
The City hired Theodore Wirth as its first
park superintendent to design the garden areas. Mr. Wirth's first project was to
create a rose garden because, in his words, "it would please the people."
This first planting grew from 100 bushes to the two and a half acre garden of some 15,000
bushes that is the center piece of Elizabeth Park and is known throughout the world.
Today the park encompasses 102 acres and boasts many
garden areas, pathways, greenhouses, lawns, a picnic grove, a pond and recreation areas.
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