Cloverly Park
Cloverly Park, between Wissahickon Avenue and School House Lane and Winona and Laurens Streets in Philadelphia, is a two-acre passive park, part of the 10,000 acres that comprise Philadelphia’s public park system.
The park was created from land donated to the city of Philadelphia in 1914 by the Edward White Clark family to what was then the Fairmount Park Commission.
As evidenced by the distinctive stone wall and columns bearing the initial “C,” the estate, called Cloverly, stretched from Wissahickon Avenue to Laurens Street, School House Lane to Coulter Street. The section that became Cloverly Park was the site of the family’s home, which they dismantled before donating the two acres to the city and selling other pieces of the estate.
Edward White Clark Residence School House Lane, S.E. corner Wissahickon Ave., Germantown "In the midst of beautifully situated and highly cultivated grounds, with tower and spacious verandah, has stood for a generation the typical suburban home of Edward W. Clark, son of the late banker, Enoch W. Clark, and the senior partner of the esteemed banking house of E.W. Clark, & Co."
Photo and caption source: Moses King, King’s Views of Philadelphia: Illustrated Monograph (New York: Moses King, 1900), part 6.
In the park’s early days, a bandshell on the former site of the home was used for concerts. Paul Manship’s “Duck Girl” sculpture, now in Rittenhouse Square, was once in the park.
Paul Manship (1885–1966), Duck Girl, bronze, 1911 (cast 1917), Rittenhouse Square, Philadelphia, PA. Purchased by the Fairmount Park Art Association, it was placed in Cloverly Park, where it stood until 1956.