LINCOLN PARK is a small, rectangular public park located between W. 11th and W. 14th streets and Kenilworth and Starkweather avenues in the TREMONT section. In 1850 Mrs. Thirsa Pelton purchased Βι¶ΉΣ³» 70 acres on Cleveland's south side with the idea of founding a girl's school. She died in 1853, before the school could be built, and her heirs surrounded "Pelton Park," as it was called, with a high fence and locked the gates. Local residents, however, had come to regard the park as a public recreation ground and repeatedly tore the fence down. The trouble stemmed from a map of the property filed in the courthouse in 1851, containing a notation indicating that Pelton Park "is occupied as a pleasure ground and is to be so kept and used forever." In 1868 the city council's committee on judiciary declared the park to be "under private control but yet a public playground." Bitter litigation followed until 1879, when the city finally purchased the property from John G. Jennings for $50,000. Residents celebrated the opening of the park on 4 July 1880 with a barbecue. By 1896, restored with new walks, a fountain, and a bandstand, the park was renamed Lincoln Square, later Lincoln Park. In 1913 brewer Otto I. Leisy donated $50,000 to build a playground in the park, and in 1936 Lincoln Park was graded and landscaped under a WPA project. In the early 1950s a swimming pool was installed; in 1981 a new "tot lot" was built. In 1989, a community-based effort to revitalize the park and the Tremont area resulted in the construction of a $25,000 gazebo in the center, approximately on the site of the old bandstand.
