Reverchon Park Iris Garden Ampitheater -- Dallas TX
N 32° 48.105 W 096° 48.767
14S E 704797 N 3631427
Between 1935-37, the WPA built many wonderful enhancements to Dallas Reverchon Park. One of them, the Iris Garden Ampitheater, has been recently restored by the Friends of Reverchon Park.
Waymark Code: WMGBAX
Location: Texas, United States
Date Posted: 02/09/2013
Views: 5
The sunken iris garden and ampitheater left by WPA workers for the enjoyment of the citizens of Dallas has been restored and replanted with hundreds of irises. The stonework stairs and seating has been repaired too.
Blasterz can't wait to come back in the spring and enjoy the frangance and beauty of these flowers, in the beauty of the stonework ampitheater built by the WPA as an homage to the park's namesake, a 19-th century botanist named Julien Reverchon.
On the City of Dallas website, the amenities of each park are listed on a hard-to-use Excel spreadsheet (that's the city of Dallas for you). The Reverchon Park ampitheater is listed in the "Other Asset" column. The Reverchon Park listing can be found on page four. Here is the link to the excel spreadsheet: (
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Reverchon Park's wonderful iris garden ampitheater was negelcted. The flowers died and the stone steps deteriorated. The ampitheater went unused for decades, except by the local criminal element that gathered here in one of several open-air drug and sex markets that flourished here in the 1990s.
The Friends of Reverchon Park decided to come together and reclaim all of Reverchon park for the citizens of Dallas. They recently finished replanting the flowers, and restoring the steps and seating. Now we await the spring time, to see the beaiuty of their hard work.
From the Friends of Reverchon Park website: (
visit link)
First named Turtle Creek Park, it was renamed Reverchon Park after Julien Reverchon. A well-known botanist and a member of La Reunion Utopian Community, Reverchon had collected more than 2,600 species and 20,000 specimens of Texas plants prior to his death in 1905. Since its beginnings, many modifications have been made to the park.
In the early 1920s, people from across Texas traveled to Reverchon Park to experience the mythical healing powers of water from the Gill Well. In 1924, the grandstand was erected, and the ballpark gained the reputation as the best baseball field in the city. The same year, fountains were installed to provide well water to local residents. During the 1920s and 1930s, improvements such as the iris garden, landscaping, picnic areas, baseball diamond, playground equipment and tennis courts transformed the park into a site of many celebrations, including Fourth of July and Juneteenth." [end]