Donna Reiner, a local historian and a good friend of Get Your PHX, has written many articles over the years for the Arizona Republic and others about Phoenix history and memorials. This month, Donna talks about Virginia Park, which was an out-growth of the domestic World War II experience.
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World War II had been raging for nearly nine months, but the women of the newly formed Virginia Garden Club had other interests to occupy their time. In an effort to “safeguard” the children of their surrounding community, they proposed to sponsor a park near where they met. It needed to be north of Virginia Avenue.
Both Coronado Park and Country Club Park were each nearly a mile away, one to the south and the other to the west, and meant crossing several busy streets to reach. This was simply unacceptable to the women for the children of their growing area.
But first they needed some land. Conveniently, there was vacant parcel on the northeast corner of 15th Street and Virginia Avenue which they purchased. Check that item off the list. Playground equipment was necessary; a generous donor gave the club the equipment. Another item checked off the list. Finally all that was left was the landscaping which might have been the easiest part for the club. After all, gardening was what brought those sixteen women of Virginia Garden Club together in the first place.
The Virginia Garden Club held a Halloween Carnival in Virginia Park in October 1943. With the proceeds, they purchased new playground equipment the following Spring. Now the park would have new teeter-totters, baby swings, parallel bars, and a place to shoot basketballs.
Around the same time, the City of Phoenix stepped in and purchased the land from the garden club and added this .5 acre parcel of land into the city parks system. Now within a little over one mile square, three different parks served the residents.
Despite the city’s purchase, the ladies of the Virginia Garden Club continued to tend to the needs of the park for a number of years. According to the Valley Garden Center, “it was one of the most outstanding projects of any [valley] garden club.”
Of the three parks within the boundaries of Thomas Road to the north and McDowell Road to the south and 7th Street to the west and 16th Street to the east, each has a quite a different history. Country Club Park was planned with the subdivision. The land for Coronado Park, like Virginia Park, was purchased by the city and is the oldest of the three. Today, Virginia Park has modern equipment which meets current safety standards. The neighborhood applied for a grant to pay for the equipment following in the footsteps of the original group of women who had an idea while the rest of the world was at war.
