Bryant Park

Established on sixteen acres of land donated by prominent developer E. C. Griffith, Bryant Park was one of the new commission’s first projects. The creation of Bryant Park heralded a new kind of green space, the small neighborhood park, that would become extremely popular in the boom period after World War II. Although small and minimally landscaped, these neighborhood parks provided recreation space for most Charlotte residents throughout the twentieth century. 

Although started in 1930, the scarcity of public funding due to the onset of the Great Depression delayed completion of Bryant Park until about the mid-1930s. The park’s complex network of granite stone boundary walls, terrace walls, and distinctive stone seating above the softball field was likely constructed as part of the Works Progress Administration, a tangible reflection of the local impact of New Deal work programs. Bryant Park is also significant as the earliest public park established within one of Charlotte’s most prolific industrial sectors, along West Morehead Street. Developers erected rows of working-class houses in the Wilmore and Wesley Heights neighborhoods as working-class families flocked to west Charlotte in the early decades of the twentieth century. Located between those two neighborhoods, Bryant Park provided west Charlotte residents with green space for a welcome respite from the noise of the factories and with specialized spaces (including a softball field, tennis courts, a volleyball court, and horseshoe pits) for a variety of recreational activities. Although it has since lost many of those amenities and nearly ten acres of its original footprint, the park remains an important reminder of the evolution of green space within Charlotte’s urban landscape. 

Located in an increasingly dense area of urban development, Bryant Park is the only public park and green space remaining in Charlotte’s West Morehead Street industrial sector.