Mill Hill Park

Mill Hill Park. From Millpond to City Park. , It is difficult to imagine that Mill Hill Park has ever been anything but a pleasant urban green space astride the Assunpink Creek, but this land had undergone remarkable changes. Over the past three centuries, it has been home to a mill and millpond, a recreational retreat, a temperance hall, an athenaeum, an ironworking shop, a slaughterhouse, and numerous stores and dwellings., history , For the first 200 years or so of Trenton history, a millpond covered most of Mill Hill Park. The pond formed upstream of a dam just above the South Broad Street Bridge. Mahlon Stacy’s gristmill, established 1679, sat on the creek’s south bank adjacent to the dam. The gristmill, later known as Trent’s Mills and the Trenton Mills, was reconfigured as a cotton picking and carding mill in 1814 and as a paper mill in 1851., Over the years, the old millpond became a popular spot for swimming, fishing, boating and even ice skating. In the late 1840s, Andrew Quintin, an enterprising businessman, opened Washington’s Retreat just upstream of the mill. In those days, a “retreat” was a place to escape the noise, smell and crowds of the city. Washington’s Retreat offered boat rentals, bowling and ice cream. Quintin’s clever play on words acknowledged that his business was located on the spot where General Washington’s Continental Army had tactically retreated from the British during the Second Battle of Trenton on January 2, 1777., Nearby and complementing the activities at Washington’s Retreat were two important buildings. The first, Temperance Hall, was built in 1851 at the corner of South Broad and East Front Streets to offer wholesome family entertainment in an alcohol-free setting. The second, the Trenton Athenaeum, a playhouse on East Front Street, was also built in the 1850s. But as the city continued to grow, the millpond’s surroundings became less attractive. An ironworks and slaughterhouse on the north side of the pond polluted the air and water. After the mill burned in 1872, the pond was filled to create developable land. Jackson Street was extended across the Assunpink with the construction of an iron-truss bridge in 1887. Eventually, the creek was hemmed in by walls and buildings., Pollution was not the least of the Assunpink’s woes. Floods, made worse by development of the watershed, regularly rushed down the creek. In 1906, the city commissioned the famous Olmsted landscape architecture firm to design a park along the creek, but this plan was never implemented. During the 1950s and 1960s, Trenton’s downtown declined rapidly. Stores closed and buildings fell into disrepair. The city sought to stem the tide of decay by creating a new park on reclaimed land. After extensive demolition and landscaping, Mill Hill Park was officially dedicated in June 1973.