Capitol Park

Capitol Park grew from four acres of land in the oldest part of Harrisburg that John Harris, Jr., donated to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in 1785 when the town plan was laid out. In its early form, it was a knoll rising from the wheat fields and swampland of the Susquehanna lowlands, land later filled and graded as the borough developed. As Harrisburg pursued designation as the state capital during the first decade of the 19th Century, the park was expanded northward to join lands of William Maclay, Pennsylvania's first U.S. Senator, creating the larger Capitol Hill on which both the old and present capitols would stand. The park also held the town's original armory, removed in 1873, around which Union troops camped during the Civil War when General Robert E. Lee's army threatened Harrisburg in the summer of 1863. A glass arboretum was later built there and remained until 1918, when the park was enlarged to the east during expansion of the Capitol Complex under Arnold Brunner's plan. Its centerpiece, the 105 foot-tall Mexican War Monument, was erected in 1868 to honor Pennsylvanians who died in the Mexican War of 1846-48, first stood at the site of the Old Executive, Library and Museum Building, was moved to its present location in 1893, and was thoroughly restored in 2002. Surrounded today by downtown Harrisburg's high-rise development, the park remains historic land associated with the city's growth and a place of enduring tranquility.

Harrisburg, Pennsylvania · United States