Martin Luther King, Jr. Park

The crown jewel of the East Side's parks is its representative in the roster of Buffalo's Olmsted network: the site of the Buffalo Museum of Science, the Humboldt Basin, a handsome rose garden, walking paths, playgrounds, picnic shelters, and pleasant greenery. Martin Luther King, Jr. Park was the first of Buffalo's Olmsted parks to open to the public, in 1872: called "The Parade" at first, it was designed to host military drills and other large gatherings, with the brightly colored Parade House as its centerpiece and Humboldt Parkway, the most magnificent of all the Olmsted parkways in Buffalo, linking it to the rest of the system. But the Parade was far from any military installations Buffalo had; to the consternation of Olmsted, the park instead became a gathering place for the Germans in the surrounding neighborhood, who disturbed his quiet pastoral vision for it with raucous oompah bands that played at the Parade House and neighborhood scamps damaging the grass with their roughhousing. To the rescue came Olmsted's two sons, the successors in his firm; their 1896 redesign curved Fillmore Avenue to discourage through traffic and added the Humboldt Basin, a lovely Lily Pond, and formal gardens. The Olmsted brothers renamed the park Humboldt Park, a name that was changed yet again in 1977 to its current one. Sadly, like most of the other elements of Buffalo's park system, the integrity of the Olmsteds' original design of the park sustained considerable damage over the course of the 20th century: the Parade House is long-gone, part of its west edge was sacrificed in 1929 for the science museum, and there's a basketball court where the Lily Pond used to be. But the greatest indignity happened in 1960, when Humboldt Parkway was torn asunder to make way for the Kensington Expressway (see infobox at right). The Buffalo Olmsted Parks Conservancy is hard at work righting those wrongs: the Humboldt Basin has already been renovated and reopened, the restoration of the Shelt

• outdoors
• museum

Address

North side of Best St. between E. Parade Ave. and Kensington Expressway

Getting there

Metro Bus 6, 12, 22, 23, 24 or 29

Website

bfloparks.org (opens in a new tab)