Lake Cliff Park

Lake Cliff Park — the Southwest’s lost Coney Island, now a rose garden above a mirror lake

Lake Cliff Park is about forty-five acres of North Oak Cliff wrapped around a sunken lake that holds the downtown skyline on its surface like a photographic plate. It opened on the Fourth of July, 1906, and it did not open as a park at all: it was a private amusement ground built by Charles Mangold and partners who advertised it as the Southwest’s greatest playground and claimed, without much modesty, that it outdid Coney Island. A flood, a bankruptcy and a century of civic reinvention later, what survives is quieter and in some ways finer — a WPA-built rose garden on a hillside, a Beaux-Arts stone pergola of 1944, and one of the best skyline views in Dallas from a bench that costs nothing to sit on. The park sits inside the Lake Cliff Historic District, listed on the National Register of Historic Places on June 17, 1994 and designated a Dallas Landmark on November 12, 1997.

Highlights

• The lake and the skyline — the sunken water body is the whole point of the design; from the western bank the towers of downtown stand reflected across it, and the view is best in the last hour of daylight.
• The rose garden — designed in 1934 by landscape architect Wynne B. Woodruff and planted with roughly two thousand roses through the Oak Cliff Society, built out and expanded by Works Progress Administration crews, and restored in 2007 and 2008.
• The 1944 pergola — a Beaux-Arts stone structure by the Kansas City firm Hare & Hare, its sandy yellow and burnt orange stonework echoing the native Texas palette, restored by the parks department in 2009 and 2010.
• The rosebud fountain — a rectangular formal pool with a fountain carrying a rosebud motif, the centerpiece of the garden’s cruciform plan.
• The grand staircase — a wide flight descending from the garden terraces to the lake, the piece of design that ties the upper and lower halves of the park together.
• Traces of the amusement park — sections of the brick-lined channel that once carried the old water rides can still be picked out around the lake’s edge.

What’s inside

The park works on two levels: an upper terrace of formal gardens and a lower ring of open recreation around the water. Mature bald cypress, eastern red cedar, pecans and cottonwoods carry the planting, which is why this park feels older and cooler than most of its neighbors.

• The multi-tiered rose garden, its stone pergola and its formal reflecting pool.
• The lake itself, fished from the bank and circled on foot.
• Tennis courts, plus baseball and soccer fields on the flatter ground.
• Playgrounds and picnic areas under the trees.
• Walking trails around the water and up through the terraces.
• Broad open lawns that hold up well for informal gatherings.

What to do and who it’s for

• Photographers — few places in the city give you water, skyline and a formal stone garden in the same frame; sunset and blue hour are the reason people come.
• Couples and wedding parties — the pergola and the rose terraces are among the most-used ceremony backdrops in Oak Cliff.
• Walkers and runners — a lake circuit with real elevation change, unusual for flat Dallas.
• Families — playgrounds, shaded picnic ground and sports fields, all within one compact park.
• Anglers — bank fishing on a quiet urban lake a few minutes from downtown.
• History-minded visitors — the layered story of amusement park, municipal swimming beach and New Deal garden is legible on the ground if you know where to look.

Getting there and practicalities

The park is in North Oak Cliff, immediately across the river from downtown, which makes it one of the few Dallas parks with a genuinely convenient car-free approach. The free Dallas Streetcar runs a 2.45-mile route from EBJ Union Station downtown to the Bishop Arts District with six stops and passes the park on the way; on the DART rail network the nearest station is 8th & Corinth, served by the Red and Blue lines, which opened on June 14, 1996 and has free commuter parking and bike racks. Entry is free and unrestricted; under the Dallas city code, public parks are closed from 11 p.m. to 5 a.m. Allow an hour to walk the lake and the gardens, longer if you settle in for sunset. On heat and shade: this park handles Texas summer better than most, because the bald cypresses and pecans around the water throw real shade and the sunken basin holds cooler air, but the rose terraces are deliberately open and unshaded, which in July and August makes them a morning or evening proposition only. The staircase between the levels is a genuine climb in the heat, so take the lower path if you are managing a stroller or limited mobility.

When to visit

Spring is the park’s showpiece — roses open from April, the cypresses leaf out bright green, and the lake is at its fullest. Summer belongs to the lower ring: shade under the old trees, fishing early, and skyline photographs at dusk when the heat finally breaks. Autumn is arguably the best of all, with bald cypress turning rust-orange around the water through November, a second, lighter flush of roses, and clear air that sharpens the downtown view. Winter empties the park and strips the cypresses bare, but the stonework and the cruciform garden plan read most clearly then, and a cold morning over still water with the skyline behind it is the image most photographers are actually chasing.

Worth knowing

Lake Cliff opened on July 4, 1906 to a crowd of some two thousand. Charles Mangold’s amusement park held a 2,500-seat theater and opera house, an 18,000-square-foot roller-skating rink billed as the largest in the world, a roller coaster, a casino, a Ferris wheel, mechanical swings, water rides and a Japanese village, all lit by electricity — itself a spectacle in 1906 — and served by streetcars that ran to the gate. Then came the flood of May 1908, which took down every bridge between Oak Cliff and Dallas and submerged the streetcar tracks that carried the customers. The park never recovered financially, and in 1914 Mangold sold forty-four acres to the City of Dallas for $55,000. George Kessler produced a master plan for the new public park in 1919. In 1921 the city razed the rides and buildings in the southwestern section and put in a concrete swimming pool and bathhouse costing $65,000, with a sand beach, showers and lockers, ten feet deep at the diving end and holding about two and a half million gallons; generations of Dallas children learned to swim there before it closed at the end of the 1950s. The garden era began in 1934, when Wynne B. Woodruff designed the rose garden and the Oak Cliff Society funded roughly two thousand rose bushes; WPA crews did most of the construction and enlarged the gardens in the early 1940s, and Hare & Hare’s pergola went up in 1944. Restoration came in two waves — the rose garden by Friends of Oak Cliff Parks in 2007 and 2008, the pergola by Dallas Park and Recreation in 2009 and 2010. The surrounding Lake Cliff Historic District, about seventy-five acres of early twentieth-century houses by architects including Albert S. Hecht and Robert C. Williams, went onto the National Register on June 17, 1994.

Visitor tips

• Come for the last hour of light. The skyline reflection across the lake is the single best thing here and it only works when the sun is low and the water is still.
• Walk the upper terraces first, then descend. The garden was designed to be entered from above, and the staircase down to the water is the sequence the plan intends.
• Ride the streetcar in. It is free, it stops near the park, and it saves you the parking problem entirely — then continue on to Bishop Arts afterward.

Questions and answers

Was there really an amusement park here? Yes. Lake Cliff opened as a private amusement ground on July 4, 1906, with a 2,500-seat theater, an 18,000-square-foot skating rink, a roller coaster, a casino and a Japanese village. Streetcars ran directly to the entrance.

When did the city take it over? In 1914, after the May 1908 flood destroyed the bridges and streetcar access and ruined the business, Charles Mangold sold forty-four acres to the City of Dallas for $55,000.

Who designed the rose garden and the pergola? The rose garden was designed in 1934 by Wynne B. Woodruff, with about two thousand roses planted through the Oak Cliff Society; the Beaux-Arts stone pergola of 1944 is the work of the Kansas City firm Hare & Hare. WPA crews built most of it.

Can you swim in the lake? No. The lake is for looking at and fishing from. The park’s famous municipal swimming pool, opened in 1921 with a sand beach, closed at the end of the 1950s and is long gone.

Is the park protected as a historic site? The surrounding Lake Cliff Historic District was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on June 17, 1994 and designated a Dallas Landmark on November 12, 1997, covering roughly seventy-five acres.

How do I get there without driving? The free Dallas Streetcar runs from Union Station downtown to Bishop Arts and passes the park; on DART rail, 8th & Corinth Station on the Red and Blue lines is the nearest stop.

What trees grow here? The signature plantings are bald cypress around the water, along with eastern red cedar, pecans and cottonwoods — which is why the lower ring stays comparatively cool in summer and turns rust-orange in November.

Is it good for a wedding or a photo shoot? It is one of the most-used outdoor settings in Oak Cliff, thanks to the pergola, the terraced rose beds, the formal pool and the skyline across the water. Any organized event needs the usual city permit.