2015 marks 75th anniversary of the completion of Fountain Lake Park

By Cathy Hay, Albert Lea Tribune

It’s hard to imagine Albert Lea without Fountain Lake Park anchoring the north end of Broadway, providing a panoramic view of the lake so central to this community’s history and culture.

Building the park took vision, dedication, three years of hard work and about $76,000. In tune with Albert Lea’s inventive spirit, the city turned an unsightly parcel into a grand focal point.

Before the late 1930s, Broadway ended at its northern tip with no connecting street running east to west. Three old buildings occupied the piece of land described in the Tribune as an “eyesore.” In November 1933 city officials envisioned a park with a lookout over the lake, a band shell for community concerts and a turnaround for traffic. They partnered with the state Civil Works Administration and federal Works Projects Administration to provide jobs for the many unemployed during the nation’s Great Depression. The results were impressive.

In 1934, workers tore down the old buildings, graded the parkland, built the band shell and stone outlook and planted grass and shrubs. The workers used materials from the old buildings in constructing the band shell, which was equipped with a series of colored lighting effects of the “most modern design” and an amplifier system to broadcast sound throughout the park.

In 1935, the city finished the landscaping and officially dedicated the park on June 20 that year. The evening was cool and clear, the newspaper reported.

“A glorious sunset left a beautiful lavender evening sky, which reflected over the rippling waters of Fountain Lake, making the sitting of the whole park and the surrounding shore lines an extraordinary picture for some artist to paint,” according to the Tribune. In the decades since, the park has been the subject of several paintings, photos and postcards.

It quickly became a community favorite. It even played a key role in tourism its first year by hosting meetings and a pageant for the state American Legion convention.

Over the next year the city purchased the right-of-way for extending Fountain Street from Washington Avenue to Broadway, built the reinforced retaining wall, paved the street and laid the sidewalks.

According to the Tribune, the total cost to the city was $36,300 and to the federal government about $40,000. The city’s share included $6,600 to buy the three-acre property. Before the park, the land was used for an ice storage building and old horse barn with the city’s water plant nearby and a laundry on Broadway.

This year will mark the 75th anniversary of North Broadway opening to traffic and completing the Fountain Lake Park project. At 5 p.m. on Aug. 3, 1937, crews removed the barricades to the new street connecting North Washington Avenue with Broadway in a broad sweeping curve. The first car to drive through was occupied by Mayor Edgar Hayek, City Manager Van Nocker, City Engineer Chester Jones and Tribune Editor Burt May.

In a later edition, the Tribune reported, “The completion of the boulevard which now connects North Broadway with Fountain Street brings to a close the big project which has transformed the end of North Broadway from a semi wild, ramshackle section of lakeshore into a beautiful park, with band shell, fountain, walks, lookout over the lake and concrete boulevard completing the semicircle above the park itself.”

Until the city tore down its water works building in the early 1960s and extended Fountain Street to the east to Bridge Avenue, traffic at the north end of Broadway either turned left west onto Fountain or turned around above the park to head south again.

In recent years, Fountain Lake Park underwent $400,000 in renovations as part of a $4.5 million downtown improvement project. A gazebo has replaced the band shell, and the newly built grand staircase is reminiscent of the stairway in the original park that brought people from Broadway to the lake.

As envisioned by city leaders more than 80 years ago, Fountain Lake Park continues to serve as a point of pride for the community.