A PARK FOR SHOE CITY

Since colonization, Brockton has been home to a number of industries. Agriculture, rope, and twine production, mills and foundaries powered the city through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Brockton hit its stride with shoe production in the nineteenth century. A small cottage industry was swiftly replaced by large shoe factories. During this industrial boom, a train line was also built, connecting Brockton with New York City and Boston (OSRP). By the Civil War, 30,000 people were working in Brockton shoe factories, producing as many as ten thousand pairs of shoes per day. These manufacturing jobs were considered “gateways to the American Dream” and earned Brockton the nickname “Shoe City.”

In addition to experiencing a huge influx of people, Brockton also saw great civil innovations for the time including street cars, a sewage system, and underground electrical wires as the home of one of Thomas Edison’s first plants (OSRP). Located just 20 miles south of Boston, Brockton was a thriving city all to its own. In the 1920s a local businessman began construction on a new, expansive public park with waterfront vistas and winding roads for pleasant drives, inspired by Olmsted’s Central Park and Emerald Necklace. This project would become D.W. Field Park.

Daniel Waldo Field

Born in Brockton, Massachusetts, in 1856, Daniel Waldo Field became successful as a local businessman and shoe factory owner. A fierce believer in the importance of public parks, Field joined the Brockton Parks Commission and made it his mission to create beautiful natural spaces in his home town. In 1925, Field donated hundreds of acres of land and personally oversaw the design and construction of D.W. Field Park through the 1930s. Serving as park commissioner until his final days, and leaving no children behind, D.W. Field Park is considered his legacy.

Field’s life and the park’s history are laid out in detail in the book Daniel Waldo Field and D.W. Field Park - A History published in 2014 by the D.W. Field Park Association.

Quincy - Shipbuilding & Granite

Massachusetts Gateway municipality (under Chapter 23A Section 3A) is a municipality with:

• population greater than 35,000 and less than 250,000 median household income below the state average

• rate of educational attainment of a bachelor’s degree or above that is below the state average

With time, manufacturing started to shrink in Brockton. The shoe industry dwindled, falling to ten thousand employees in the 1950s, and three thousand by 1980. A similar pattern impacted other industrial cities in the Boston area (pictured above). The state now calls these post-industrial communities Gateway Cities, after the jobs they once held that were considered gateways to the American dream.

Massachusetts has launched multiple initiatives to address the legacy of social and environmental challenges that Gateway Cities have been managing in the years since their industries disappeared. One such project is Greening the Gateway Cities, a tree planting campaign, which has added over 2,600 trees to the Brockton urban canopy. Revitalizing D.W. Field Park may be aligned with other initiatives, potentially unlocking funding opportunities at the state level.

Design Considerations

There may be opportunties for D.W. Field Park’s design features to explicitly educate people about the park’s place in local and regional history. These might include new interpretive signs, moving existing placques away from busy roads closer to pedestrian walkways. A member of the client team has also suggested interactive QR codes be posted throughout the park linked to online content and resources.

As a designated National Historic Site, there has been an expressed interest in maintaining some consistency with the park’s original design, both in terms of aesthetic and intention as a ‘pleasure-driving’ park.