Downtown Dallas has turned an almost 6-acre piece of property into a revamped park featuring artwork for visitors to enjoy.
Original Carpenter Plaza with large amounts of mud, dirt and some patches of grass. | Image by Juan Figueroa, The Dallas Morning News
Carpenter Park reopens on May 3 as the latest of many renovations to Dallas, with a price tag of $20.1 million. When the park initially opened in 1981, then named Carpenter Plaza, it was little more than a patch of decorative space divided by a busy intersection.
View of the original Carpenter Plaza with dirt patches and trash everywhere. | Image by Juan Figueroa, The Dallas Morning News
Part of its decor was a massive steel sculpture by Robert Irwin, one of America’s most significant contemporary artists.
At 700 feet long, Irwin’s Portal Park Piece was designed to be noticed by cars passing the location at high speeds as much as it was by individuals standing in the park.
The sculpture remains, but it has been spun 90 degrees clockwise to reside entirely inside the expanded park. Now cutting across the 5.75-acre space, it has been renamed Portal Park Slice.
Because Irwin’s “site-generated” works are created in their location and cannot be transported, the rearrangement is a first for the artist, who is now 94 years old.
Aside from its reorientation, the sculpture has also been reimagined, with pieces cut out and much of its length trimmed.
Another sculpture, Robert Berks’ dappled bronze statue of the park’s namesake, John W. Carpenter, stands at the entrance to welcome visitors inside.
The two sculptures are connected by a wandering path of golden, hexagonal granite tiles, lined with foliage and benches lit from below at night.
“The idea is you get a variety of heights and textures,” said Mary Margaret Jones of the path’s decorative greenery. “The layering of spaces makes it look bigger, and makes it a walk of discovery.”
Jones is the project manager for Hargreaves Jones Associates, the New York-based landscape architecture firm that headed the park’s renovation under the direction of the non-profit foundation Parks for Downtown.
Aside from Carpenter’s likeness, the entrance to the park is highlighted by an interactive fountain. Over 100 jets cross overhead in a basket weave pattern, allowing visitors to walk through the streams and remain dry. The center of the fountain has five water cannons that shoot a geyser into the air.
The way into the park continues through a play area and a dog run that keeps pets away from nearby flowers. A center grove features redbud trees from Texas, Oklahoma, and Mexico.
Carpenter Park is the third of four parks constructed through Parks for Downtown Dallas. It follows Pacific Plaza Park which opened in 2019 and West End Square which opened in 2021. The fourth, Harwood Park, is expected to open in 2023.
Civic Garden (formerly Belo Garden) was opened in 2012 by the foundation’s predecessor and was also designed by Hargreaves Jones.
