Freedom Park (Arlington, Virginia)

Freedom Park is a two block long elevated linear park in the Rosslyn section of Arlington, Virginia. It was built on an elevated concrete structure originally constructed for use as an automobile overpass, and as such, rises above and over the surrounding streets.

Freedom Park
Location within the Washington, D.C. area
LocationArlington, Virginia
Coordinates38°53′39″N 77°04′13″W
Created1994
The Journalists' Memorial
Segments of the Berlin Wall in Freedom Park

The park was founded in 1996 as a joint-venture with the Newseum and Freedom Forum Journalists Memorial, both operated by the Freedom Forum, and was dedicated to the spirit of freedom and the struggle to preserve it. In 2008 the Newseum moved to a new location in the District of Columbia, upon which time Monday Properties took over operations of the park, and most of the original exhibits were removed.[1]

Today the park is used primarily by residents and workers of Rosslyn as a quiet escape from the busy city below.

Exhibits

Current
  • Spectrum of Freedom, 7 tile murals created by Karen Singer and 270 children from Arlington schools [2]

Former exhibits

Former exhibits which were removed in 2008 included:

  • Stones from the Warsaw Ghetto.
  • A headless statue of Vladimir Lenin, one of many that were beheaded when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.
  • A bronze casting of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Birmingham jail-cell door.
  • A bronze casting of a boat used by Cuban refugees.
  • A casting of a South African ballot box from the apartheid era.
  • Pieces of the Berlin Wall — the largest display of the wall outside of Germany.[3][4]
  • Journalists Memorial, a 24-foot-tall (7.3 m) spiraling memorial made of dichroic glass that honors reporters, editors, photographers and broadcasters who gave their lives reporting the news [5]

A reproduction of the Statue of Freedom, which caps the dome of the United States Capitol, and the Goddess of Democracy, originally constructed for the Tiananmen Square protests in China, were also on display.

References
  1. "The Strange History of Freedom Park". ARL Now. June 8, 2011. Retrieved 5 October 2015.
  2. "Arlington VA Public Art Collection". Arlingtonarts.org. Archived from the original on 2009-04-15. Retrieved 2009-07-16.
  3. "15 Years After the Fall of the Wall". Germany.info. Archived from the original on 2008-07-04. Retrieved 2009-07-16.
  4. The largest section of the Wall to be preserved can be found at the 1420-yard East Side Gallery in Mühlenstrasse, Germany (found on German Embassy site: Germany Info: 15 Years After the Fall Archived 2008-07-04 at the Wayback Machine).
  5. "Journalists Memorial". Freedom Forum. Retrieved 2009-07-16.
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