In 1886, Buffalo’s Board of Park Commissioners wanted to expand their park system to include not just the large parks and parkways but smaller grounds as well. As the city did with their large parks, they turned to Frederick Law Olmsted for their small ones. In April 1887, Olmsted submitted his plan for Day’s Park. The park was named for Thomas Day, a wealthy early settler of Buffalo who gifted the land for the park in 1859, under the condition the land be made into a park bearing his name.
At Day’s Park, Olmsted’s plan provided “a long plat of turf studded with trees, with a fountain in the center…" the fountain was an uncommon feature for one of Buffalo’s Olmsted-designed parks, with Day’s Park being the only one Olmsted designed in Buffalo to include one. Despite the removal of the original fountain in 1923, Day’s Park remains the way Olmsted envisioned it.
Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site
Source: U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service