Jordan Park is one of the first completed WPA projects in Allentown and with the construction of Fountain Park were the beginnings of the WPA effort that has come to define our city park system. Nearly eighty years after, Jordan Park remains a frequently used park and wonderful asset to the city of Allentown.
On the morning of my visit the park was buzzing with activity. Folks were playing basketball, baseball, walking their dogs, and some were just relaxing.
Jordan Park is located directly alongside the Jordan Creek off of Sumner Avenue just along the edge of Allentown and Whitehall. It is hard to miss the park driving along Sumner with the baseball diamond clearly visible and the WPA stone walls alongside the creek easily seen in the distance.
The foot bridge had fallen to the recent rains:
The thing about Jordan Park that surprised me today was some construction efforts going on inside the park. There are bare patches near to the gravel path that look as if they are about to be replanted with trees and bushes; which are a good combination to help ease erosion:
Farther along, something very curious is going on. There are a line of Willow trees following alongside a wide patch of mud. Willow trees usually grow directly creek side and most of our parks based around creeks can attest to it.
These guys are also growing in a way that make it seem that at one time the Jordan creek was either much wider at this point or that a very marshy area existed between these trees and the creek.
This mud patch is apparently part of whatever reconstruction is going on down there. A riparian buffer looks as if it is being created directly along the edges of the creek.
Freshwater shellfish?
Driving home, I pulled a u-turn at Home Depot and discovered that the grassy area next to the Jordan over there was completely dug up and construction equipment was present. I have no idea if that was in any way related to whatever may be going on in Jordan Park but it certainly was an eyebrow raising thing to see.
Jordan Park remains a great destination for residents of the city of Allentown. If anyone knows what is going on down there, let me know. The history in our parks is inescapable. The effects of the WPA still stand today, and here in one of the parks they first created they do not go unnoticed or forgotten.
#1 by Donna Kipila on June 25, 2010 - 8:44 am
HI Andrew,
I found your site while doing an internet search on the history of Jordan Park. I am trying to find out who owned the property before the city did. Was there a farm located there? It has long been rumored in my mother’s family that her grandfather, an Austrian immigrant, was the owner of that farm and either he sold or donated the land which became Jordan Park. Could you point me in the right direction to obtain this information?
Yes I am Andy Kipila’s mother.
#2 by Andrew Kleiner on July 3, 2010 - 12:25 pm
Hi Mrs. Kipila,
Go down to the historical library at the Lehigh County Heritage Museum next to Trout Hall, you’ll be able to find those records there.
#3 by David Emme on April 9, 2012 - 3:23 am
In opne answer I have is unfortunate. Not sure what caused this to be this way-we left the area in 1982 and was ten years old and yes-the Jordan Creek was much bigger. Some people came there to go swimming from time to time and had a set of railroad tracks over a portion of the creek< When I first came back to this area in 2006-was sad to see how things turned out. For some of us-had good memories in the past. We lived on North Jordan Street. In saying this, just expressing but not intending to getting on someone-sometimes just the existential Allentown Native