Voting is now closed.
Votes will be tallied and presented to the Recreation and Parks Commission for discussion and, subsequently, a recommendation of the park’s official name will be presented to City Council for its consideration.
Justifications for each proposed name are provided in the drop down tab below.
The poll is now closed for submissions. Submissions were accepted from September 13, 2021 until 4 pm September 24, 2021
The form will allow you to submit your selection only once. If you have already submitted, you will see a message "You have already submitted that form."
Park Naming Criteria: The City will adopt a name for the new park that meets at least one of the criteria established in the City’s Public Park and Recreation Facility Naming Policy. The criteria are as follows:
- Geographical location of the park of facility
- Natural or geological features proximate to the park or facility
- Cultural or historical significance to the City or surrounding neighborhood
- Name of an individual who has made a significant contribution to the community, country, state, or field of parks and recreation.
Proposed Park Names and Justifications
Proposed Names (vetted) |
Background and Justification |
|---|---|
| Octavia E. Butler Park variations: Octavia Butler Park, Butler Park |
Born in Pasadena in 1947, Butler was an African American science fiction author and a multiple recipient of the Hugo and Nebula awards. In 1995, Butler became the first science-fiction writer to receive a MacArthur Fellowship. Author of The Parable of the Sower, Fledgling, Kindred, and other landmark works, her papers are collected at the nearby Huntington Library. |
| Playhouse Village Park variation: Playhouse District Park |
Named for the location of the park in the Playhouse Village neighborhood. |
| Alson Clark Park | Alson Skinner Clark was an American Impressionist painter best remembered for his landscapes. He was also a photographer, plein aire painter, art educator and muralist. His work is still prominent in the Playhouse Village. Alson Clark was the director of the Stickney Memorial Art School, which was an early precursor to the Norton Simon Museum. Alson Clark painted the fire curtain of the Pasadena Playhouse, depicting a Spanish galleon in full sail, and a group of murals (1929) at the Bank of the West (former 1st Trust & Savings Bank) at 587 East Colorado Boulevard (Colorado & Madison). |
| Baderian Park | Former Director of Pasadena Recreation and Parks Department |
| Charlotte Perkins Gilman Park | Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935) was a novelist, writer of short stories, poetry and non-fiction and an advocate for social reform. She has been inducted into the National Womens Hall of Fame and is best remembered for her short story, The Yellow Wallpaper. She lived in Pasadena at the intersection of Orange Grove and Arroyo Terrace and at 239 S. Catalina Ave. |
| Chippewa Park | The word Pasadena literally means "valley" in the Ojibwa (Chippewa) Indian language, but it has been interpreted to mean "Crown of the Valley" and "Key of the Valley," hence the adoption of both the crown and the key in the official city seal and goes back to the founding of the city in 1875 and Thomas B. Elliott. |
| Julia Childs Park | Born Julia Carolyn McWilliams in Pasadena, California in 1912, Childs was an American cooking teacher, author, and television personality. She is recognized for bringing French cuisine to the American public with her debut cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and her subsequent television programs, the most notable of which was The French Chef, which premiered in 1963. |
| Colonel G. G. Green Memorial Park | George Gill Green was born in Clarksboro, East Greenwich Township, New Jersey in 1842. In 1893, Green acquired an uncompleted hotel in Pasadena, California, and in 1894 completed and opened it as the Hotel Green. In 1898, Green built an annex west of the Hotel Green, the "Central Annex" building or "Castle Green" on the block across Raymond Avenue. "Castle Green" is listed on the National Register of Historic Places in Pasadena, the California State Historic Landmark Register, and the City of Pasadena Register of City Treasures. |
| Edna Griffin Park variations: E. Griffin Park, Dr. Edna L. Griffin Park |
Dr. Edna L. Griffin was Pasadena's first black female physician. Her original practice was located at 891 N. Fair Oaks Ave. Dr. Griffin was also a key community leader. She was the first black woman president of Pasadena's NAACP chapter (1938-47) and led the effort to desegregate the Brookside Plunge swimming pool. |
| Eddie Van Halen Park variation: Edward Van Halen Memorial Park |
An American musician and songwriter. He was the main songwriter and guitarist of the American rock band Van Halen, which he co-founded in 1972 with his brother, drummer Alex Van Halen, bassist Mark Stone, and singer David Lee Roth. He is regarded as one of the all-time greatest guitar players in rock history and was well known for popularizing the tapping guitar solo technique, allowing rapid arpeggios to be played with two hands on the fretboard. Eddie Van Halen moved to Pasadena in 1962 and attended elementary school in Pasadena. |
| Gilmor Brown Park variation: Gilmor Brown Playbox Park |
The artistic community that founded the Pasadena Playhouse was started in 1916 when actor-director Gilmor Brown began producing a series of plays at a renovated burlesque theatre with his troupe "The Gilmor Brown Players". Brown established the Community Playhouse Association of Pasadena in 1917 that would later become the Pasadena Playhouse Association. Due to grewth of rapid growth of Pasadena Playhouse association, the citizens of Pasadena raised funds to build a new theatre in the city center at 39 South El Molino Avenue. The Pasadena Playhouse was completed in 1925. |
| Harriet Doerr Park | A granddaughter of California railroad magnate and noted collector of art and rare books, Henry Edwards Huntington, Harriet Green Huntington grew up in a Pasadena, California. Her first novel, Stones for Ibarra, was published in 1984 and won a National Book Award that year, for First Work of Fiction. Doerr died in Pasadena in 2002. |
| Herkimer Park | The original name for Union Street in that part of town was Herkimer Street. |
| Oak Knoll Park variation: Oak Knoll Community Park |
Neighborhood is filled with oak knolls and the location is Oak Knoll Avenue. |
| Linus Pauling Park | Linus Pauling was an American chemist, biochemist, chemical engineer, peace activist, author, and educator. He published more than 1,200 papers and books, of which about 850 dealt with scientific topics. New Scientist called him one of the 20 greatest scientists of all time. For his scientific work, Pauling was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1954. For his peace activism, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1962. He served with distinction at Caltech and was an early advocate of anti-racist ideas in Pasadena as he defended the city's Japanese population during World War II. He was a staunch anti-nuclear advocate. |
| Loretta Thompson-Glickman Park | Glickman was a jazz singer and toured with the New Christy Minstrels before retiring from the entertainment industry in 1975. In 1977, she became the first black woman elected as a Pasadena City Director. Four years later, she became the city's first black Vice Mayor, before becoming the first African American Mayor in 1982. |
| Lukens Park | Lukens served two terms as mayor of Pasadena and was active in municipal and civic affairs of early-day Pasadena and remained prominent in civic and conservation issues until his death in 1918. Lukens collected pine cones and seeds of different types and conducted experimental plantings on the mountain slopes above Pasadena, earning him the name "Father of Forestry. His house is the iconic gingerbread home only a few steps from where this park will be on 267 North El Molino.. |
| Michael Zinzun Memorial Park | Michael Zinzun was an ex-Black Panther and anti-police brutality activist who grew up in Pasadena |
| Richard Feynman Memorial Park | Richard Feynman was an American theoretical physicist. For contributions to the development of quantum electrodynamics, Feynman received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965 jointly with Julian Schwinger and Shin'ichirō Tomonaga. Professor Richard Feynman spent most of his career at Caltech and he is considered to be one of the top ten physicists of the 20th century. |
| Rocket Girls Park | The "Rocket Girls" were the women that worked at NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) before the development of desktop computers and did the majority of the hand calculations for its missions. Barbara Paulson, Macie Roberts, Helen Ling and Eleanor Frances were mostly unknown, but their contributions and legacies include diversifying the female populace and continuing the excellence of female workers at NASA and JPL. |
| Ruby McKnight Williams Park | Pasadena resident served Pasadena for over 50 years, including as NAACP branch president in 1959, 1960, 1969, and into the 70's. It was during this racially contentious period in American history that under McKnight's leadership the branch supported two national precedent-setting civil rights cases. Since 1958, the Pasadena NAACP has recognized individuals who demonstrate excellence in community service with an award named in McKnight’s honor. |
| Sheldon Epps Park | The first black Artistic Director at Pasadena Playhouse. Epps' tenure lasted twenty years until he retired in 2017. He was the first arts recipient of the James Irvine Award for Artistic Excellence and was known for his passion for diversity on stage and off. No one of color was attending the theater when he first started and he made it his mission to open Pasadena to the possibilitys of experiencing diversity. |
| Tongva Community Park | Hahamog'na is the Tongva village archeological site located in the upper Arroyo Seco area just above the Devil's Gate in the present-day Altadena-Pasadena-Jet Propulsion Laboratory area. |
| Union Park variations: Union Mill Park, Union Oaks Park |
"Union", "Oaks" and "Mill" reference the adjoining street names. The name also recognizes the cultural significance of the many oak trees that have been so prominent in the city. |