place

Falls Park on the Reedy

1967 establishments in South CarolinaGeography of Greenville, South CarolinaParks in South CarolinaProtected areas of Greenville County, South CarolinaTourist attractions in Greenville, South Carolina
Urban public parks
Greenville Falls Park 2021 04 25
Greenville Falls Park 2021 04 25

Falls Park on the Reedy is a 32-acre (130,000 m2) park adjacent to downtown Greenville, South Carolina in the historic West End district. Considered the birthplace of Greenville, the park was founded in 1967 when the Carolina Foothills Garden Club reclaimed 26 acres (110,000 m2) of land that had been previously used by textile mills. Renovation accelerated in the late 1990s under Mayor Knox H. White, prompting the formation of the Falls Park Endowment, a private charity supporting ongoing development. Each summer the park is home to the Upstate Shakespeare Festival. The park's most striking feature is a unique pedestrian bridge that curves around a waterfall on the Reedy River. Named the Liberty Bridge at Falls Park on the Reedy, the 355-foot (108 m) long suspension bridge is supported by cables on only one side, giving an unobstructed view of the falls. It was designed by Boston firm Rosales + Partners with German firm Schlaich Bergermann & Partner as structural engineers and completed in the fall of 2004. It was awarded the Arthur G. Hayden medal for innovative design in 2005.Near the bridge, the Main Street entrance to the park is graced by Bryan Hunt's 16 ft (4.9 m) bronze sculpture Fall Lake Falls and contains a restaurant and other visitor amenities at the new Falls Park Center. The park also features a collection of public gardens and a wall from the original 1776 grist mill built on the site.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Falls Park on the Reedy (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Falls Park on the Reedy
Liberty Bridge, Greenville Downtown

Geographical coordinates (GPS) Address Nearby Places
placeShow on map

Wikipedia: Falls Park on the ReedyContinue reading on Wikipedia

Geographical coordinates (GPS)

Latitude Longitude
N 34.844611111111 ° E -82.40125 °
placeShow on map

Address

Liberty Bridge

Liberty Bridge
29601 Greenville, Downtown
South Carolina, United States
mapOpen on Google Maps

Greenville Falls Park 2021 04 25
Greenville Falls Park 2021 04 25
Share experience

Nearby Places

Wyche Pavilion
Wyche Pavilion

The Wyche Pavilion is the two-story, open-air shell of a historic building in downtown Greenville, South Carolina, used in the 21st century as an event venue. As part of the Reedy River Industrial District, the building was listed in the National Register of Historic Places on January 14, 1979. The brick structure was built in 1904 by noted Greenville engineer and industrial architect Joseph Emory Sirrine (1872–1947) with large windows of the same size on both floors, a flat roof, and a cupola at its center. The building was intended as a paint shop for the adjacent Greenville Coach Factory, but with the coming of the automobile, the owners of the coach factory sold the business in 1911. In 1925, the building became the home of Duke's Mayonnaise, a successful enterprise created by Greenville resident Eugenia Thomas Slade Duke (1881–1968).The building was virtually abandoned by 1958 and had fallen into disrepair before it was purchased in the 1980s by the Peace Center, a Greenville performing arts complex, which initially intended to restore the building. After financial constraints prevented the remodeling, the building was gutted, turned into an open-air pavilion, and named for Tommy Wyche (1926–2015) and his wife Harriet, leaders in the transformation of downtown Greenville. In 2019, following the development of Falls Park, the Peace Center proposed to install windows, doors, and HVAC equipment in order to transform the building into "a fully-functioning performance venue, featuring state of the art sound and lighting". Despite two design proposals, the second of which included a recommendation by city planners, Greenville's Design Review Board rejected the Peace Center plans by a vote of 3–2.

West End (Greenville, South Carolina)
West End (Greenville, South Carolina)

West End is a neighborhood in Greenville, South Carolina. Located across the Reedy River in downtown, the west end became home to Furman University when it was first established in 1852. The school expanded to fill fifty acres and then moved to its current location northwest of the city in 1958. The Greenville and Columbia Railroad (now part of Norfolk Southern) arrived there in 1853, bringing increased commercial activity to the neighborhood that had been first settled in the 1830s. This activity was truncated less than a decade later with the coming of the American Civil War of 1861–65. After the war, though, the introduction of new fertilizers made cotton farming profitable again in the area. Cotton and fertilizer warehouses and numerous support industries sprung up. The commercial success, with its accompanying residential requirements, brought churches and schools to the west end. Chicora College was established in 1893 for women before relocating to Columbia 22 years later. (It merged with Queens University of Charlotte in North Carolina in 1930.) After the turn of the twentieth century, many textile mills moved into the area from locations nearer to Greenville's center. But by 1930 the shift from textile mills to soft drink manufacturing and bottling had begun. As more and more automobiles became common, dealerships and repair shops also were constructed, Since the 1970s the West End has been revitalized after many years of decline. In the 2010s the West End Historic District has become the arts and entertainment center of the city. Anchored in the Falls Park on the Reedy, the Liberty Bridge (a pedestrian suspension bridge) crosses over the Reedy River. The Peace Center provides a venue for a large range of cultural events, while Fluor Field at the West End a provides seasonal home for the Greenville Drive, a minor league affiliate of the Boston Red Sox.