With increasing interest in diversity, educators and engineers seek to understand why. The historic character of Terrace Park is visible in the long earthen terraces with their steps of Sioux quartzite, the stone Lion’s Den building, the Mediterranean-styled outdoor stage, and the stone steps and walls running through the Japanese gardens.Īmerican Indians are among the most under-represented groups in the engineering profession in the United States. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, a series of improvements to the gardens mediated a long period of neglect. They were built in a city park by an amateur designer who had become interested in the principles of Japanese design through a correspondence course. Unlike many Japanese garden projects in America, the gardens at Terrace Park were not built on a private estate or at a public exposition. ![]() The stage and gardens provided important recreational opportunities for the growing residential area northeast of downtown. The Japanese gardens at Terrace Park and the smaller sunken gardens at McKennan Park are the only remaining formal historic gardens among the oldest parks in Sioux Falls. The park terraces were one of the most substantial and lasting landforming projects in that early period. From 1922 to 1937, the city and various park staff worked on projects that terraced the steep slope into an amphitheater, built an outdoor stage, and created a Japanese garden along the lakeshore. The land for Terrace Park was acquired by the City of Sioux Falls in 1916 and improvements to the new park began in 1917. The social history of parks development indicated the city’s desire to create facilities to meet the standards of their desired quality of life, and the use of Japanese aesthetics for the lakeshore gardens shows the depth and breadth of American interest in Japanese landscape design. The new parks incorporated aesthetic landscape features designed by amateur caretakers and professional architects, but there were also athletic spaces for youth and adult recreation and cultural spaces for music and other performances. ![]() Terrace Park was one of the early parks established as Sioux Falls sought to develop cultural and recreational amenities attractive to its growing population. Terrace Park is eligible for the National Register of Historic Places at a local level under Criterion A for Entertainment/Recreation and Social History. The historic core of the park is comprised of an upper section of open play and picnic space, a central section of earthen terraces built with stone steps leading down to an outdoor stage and garden gates, and the western section, Japanese gardens, that extend along the shore of Covell Lake, an oxbow lake of the Big Sioux River. ![]() Terrace Park is located northeast of downtown Sioux Falls.
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