John F. Collins Park

John F. Collins Park. . , John F. Collins (1936-2011) was a landscape architect, urban planner, and educator. Growing up locally in Conshohocken, Pennsylvania, he showed an early interest in horticulture, starting a commercial nursery at age 15. Following degrees in landscape architecture from Pennsylvania State University and the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University, Collins co-founded the landscape design firm Adleman, Collins and DuTot in Philadelphia. The firm later merged with others to form The Delta Group, incorporating urban planning, engineering, and architecture into the firm's mission., During the period of renewal in the 1950s and 1960s, Collins was directly involved in designing many parks, including Delancey Park (now known as Three Bears Park), Society Hill Walkways, Chestnut Park, Interstate 95 Expressway Cover Park and Schuylkill River Park, which was completed in 2006. Throughout the course of his career, Collins served frequently as a lecturer and visiting professor. At Temple University, where he worked for 10 years, he pioneered the landscape architecture program, becoming the department's first chair in 1988. Beyond the university, he helped establish community and teaching gardens in Philadelphia for elementary school students as well as for prison inmates., Chestnut Park, at 17th and Chestnut Streets, is a unique "pocket park" that was inspired by Dorothy Haas, wife of F. Otto Haas, the former chairman of Rohm and Haas Corporation. The William Penn Foundation purchased the site, once a parking lot, in 1978 and sponsored a design competition to build a park. The Delta Group won the design competition with the theme "Nature in Philadelphia," to celebrate the region's indigenous landscape and native people., Delta Group employees and the Collins family were integrally involved in the park's construction and on-going maintenance. The three totems decorating the fountain, representing the three tribes of the Lenni Lenape Indians, were sculpted by Christopher and John R. Collins, John's sons, and Ted Knighton, his nephew. Chestnut Park includes many natural elements, among them native plants, mica gneiss schist embedded in concrete, a fountain, and highly expressive wrought iron gates with representations of local wildlife designed by sculptor Christopher Ray (1937-2000)., The park was dedicated on June 5, 1979, to celebrate the legacy of William Penn's "greene countrie town." The Delta Group received an ASLA Honor Award for its park design in 1983. In 1999, the park was awarded an ASLA Centennial Medallion., In 2011, the park's entrances were renovated by Kieren Timberlake architects. Chestnut Park, now rededicated as John F. Collins Park, is owned and maintained by the Center City District Foundation. The development and restoration of the park was underwritten by the William Penn Foundation.