Peninsula Community Center, Park & Rose Garden

16 acres
Rental Information: 503-823-2525
Community Center: 503-823-3620
Community Center: 700 N Rosa Parks Way
Rose Garden: N Ainsworth Avenue between N Kerby and N Albina Avenues
Peninsula Pool, 700 N Rosa Parks Way, link to pool information

Includes the city’s first public rose garden and first community center, a historically designated bandstand, and Portland’s second oldest playground. The park was designed by architects Ellis Lawrence and Ormond R. Bean and developed in 1912 as a part of Portland’s City Beautiful Movement. This Movement of the early twentieth century held that a city should be a place of beauty and art, not just a symbol of industrialization and economic development.

This is Oregon’s only sunken garden, as originally this land was a quarry and then a quarter-horse racetrack before it was purchased by the city of Portland in 1909. Its formal design is completely symmetrical, with six-foot slopes and a central fountain. The Garden was the showplace of its time, with 300,000 visitors in its first year, when it opened in 1913. The 2- acre Rose Garden was designed by Emanuel T. Mische, a famous landscape architect trained by the Olmstead Brothers firm. Mische became Portland Parks first Commissioner, a Park Board member and later city commissioner.

Community Center Amenities

Links

Friends of Peninsula Park Rose Garden
Facebook Page/Friends of Peninsula Park Rose Garden
Portland Parks and Recreation/Peninsula Park Rose Garden
Portland Parks and Recreation/Peninsula Park
Facebook Page/Peninsula Park Community Center
Portland Parks and Recreation/Peninsula Park Community Center