EDITOR’S NOTE: This story was originally published on Richland Source in 2015.
The land that is Johns Park was donated to the city in 1907, though the neighborhood around it — known then as the Johns Addition — was in place since the 1890s.
Within the first decade of its life the park grew a couple rustic picnic pavilions and a graceful fountain, but they were replaced during the Depression by a large brick pavilion funded and built by the US government as a WPA project.
Johns Park was once the home of a vital and active baseball diamond used by city leagues, but that ball field is today a grassy meadow. It also had tennis courts that have since been repurposed to basketball.
1929 rotogravure image from Richland County Chapter Ohio Genealogical Society
1936 WPA photo from Richland County Museum
