Washington Park
Colorado
Washington Park, or Wash Park as everyone calls it, stretches about one hundred sixty-five acres just a few miles southeast of downtown. It holds two lakes: Smith Lake to the north, which was in place when the park was first laid out, and Grasmere Lake to the south, added in nineteen oh six and named after a village in England's Lake District associated with the poet William Wordsworth. The park was designed beginning in eighteen ninety-nine by landscape architect Reinhard Schuetze, and later refined by Saco DeBoer.
The boathouse on Smith Lake's southern shore opened in nineteen thirteen, designed by architect Jules Jacques Benois Benedict in a mix of Italianate, Prairie, and Arts and Crafts styles. On the west side, the Perennial Garden dates to nineteen seventeen and remains the largest formal flower bed in the Denver parks system. Closer to Grasmere Lake, DeBoer designed a second garden in nineteen twenty-six modeled on the gardens at George Washington's Mount Vernon estate in Virginia.
The loop road ringing the park draws a steady stream of runners, cyclists, and inline skaters on almost any dry day. On summer weekends the meadow fills with volleyball, soccer, and the general hum of a city that clearly knows it has something good.
