Matthias Baldwin Park

This is a great little pocket park in Logan Square. The garden is attractive, there are plenty of benches and there are a few grassy areas where people can have picnics or take in the sun.
Right now there is a lot of construction going on in the neighborhood, but when its wrapped the park will be spruced up a bit too.
You wouldn’t believe the amount of wildlife I have observed there over the last year. Peregrine Falcons, American Kestrels, Cooper’s and Red-​Tailed Hawks… various sparrows and finches, doves, mockingbirds and robins nest there, and there is also a groundhog and some rabbits… who knew?

This park sucks! I don’t know when those pictures were taken, but it looks nothing like them. Everything was grown in, in the garden. And a few benches had tree branches that were literally resting on them. A lot of the benches were beat up and falling apart as well. Aside from that, there’s a ditch that runs the entire length of one of the sides of the park. There’s a gate blocking it, but it has rusted barbed wire over it. The ditch is pretty grown in, but if you go to either side of it where the street is and look down in the ditch, you will be blown away by how much garbage is down there. Aside from the garbage, I think homeless people live down there. It’s not an eye sore because you kind of have to go out of your way to see it, but knowing that’s right next to a park, doesn’t sit too well with me.

This is a charming park that is named after Matthias Baldwin, who founded the Baldwin Locomotive Works. The locomotive factories once dominated this area. And after the operations were relocated to Eddystone, Matthias Baldwin donated the willed the land to the city that is now this park.
In the park, there is a marker that explains the historic significance of this area:
«BALDWIN LOCOMOTIVE WORKS
For years the nation’s leading locomotive manufacturer, it exported products worldwide. Established here by Matthias Baldwin in 1835, it was an early example of integrated industrial organization, employing more than 15,000 workers. Its 39 buildings encompassed 17 acres and transformed the surrounding area from a rural estate to one of the city’s first factory neighborhoods. Relocating to Eddystone in 1928, it ceased production in 1956.»
If you’re in the Fairmount area, this is a great place to have a brown-​bag lunch on a park bench.