Park Avenue's Chain of Parks in Tallahassee, Florida

The Chain of Parks is a row of seven City of Tallahassee parks, 4.0 acres in all, set in the median of Park Avenue downtown.

The City's parks map lists the Park Avenue Chain of Parks as sites 73 through 79 with a total area of 4.0 acres, and gives each park its own acreage. The 1979 National Register of Historic Places nomination for the Park Avenue Historic District describes a parkway 120 feet wide, landscaped with live oaks, beds of azaleas and roses and geometric walks, with two paved roadways 40 feet wide running along it. Eight north and south cross streets (Boulevard, Bronough, Duval, Adams, Monroe, Calhoun, Gadsden and Meridian) divide it into seven parks, each 340 feet long, the nomination says.

The Tallahassee-Leon County GIS heritage neighborhoods page describes the Park Avenue Historic District as a series of neighborhoods that grew up along a linear street of public parks, and says the district holds the oldest continuously open spaces in the City of Tallahassee.

The parks sit on the northern side of a 200-foot cleared strip that surrounded early Tallahassee, a strip officially named McCarty Street until 1905.

The City of Tallahassee planning history says the city was established in 1825, after the legislature chose to place the capital of the new Florida Territory midway between St. Augustine and Pensacola. When the city was incorporated in 1825, the National Register nomination records, its limits included a cleared strip two hundred feet wide around the whole town, traditionally said to be a buffer against the Indians still in the area. The northern stretch, from Boulevard Street on the west to Meridian Street on the east, remains intact as Park Avenue. The county GIS history page gives the same reason in brief: the chain of parks began as a 200-foot-wide buffer against Native American attacks.

The Museum of Florida History, in its Knott House exhibit, says a 200-foot cleared area originally surrounded the town with town lots fronting it, and that the lot bought in 1842 for the house now called the Knott House fronted McCarty Street, the 200-foot cleared area. The nomination adds that the strip was officially McCarty Street until 1905 and was also known as the Two-hundred Foot Street.

For decades the strip had no set purpose. The nomination notes a city market house that stood in what is now McCarty Park from 1846 until 1881, and temporary shanties the town allowed for merchants burned out by the fire of 1843; the museum says that fire destroyed much of the business district.

A hotel, a sea captain and a Tallahassee women's improvement society turned the Park Avenue strip into parks between 1883 and the 1890s.

The 1979 nomination says there were no formal parks on the strip until the 1880s. The first, Leon Park, was laid out with the Leon Hotel, which opened in 1883 on the old courthouse square and burned in 1925. In 1885 the City Council allowed Captain William C. Lewis to lay out, at his own expense, a park 340 feet long in McCarty Street in front of the Lewis mansion, and that plan set the standard for the parks that followed. The Knott House Museum also credits Captain William C. Lewis, whose home stood on the north side of the park, with developing Lewis Park in 1885.

Lewis Park was already the Green. Beginning in the late 1830s, prominent families held an elaborate May Day pageant there, beneath the massive live oak known as the May Oak, and the celebrations were discontinued in the 1970s, the nomination records. The museum's Park Avenue activity guide adds that Union troops camped in the space in 1865 during the federal occupation of Tallahassee.

In 1891 a group of local women formed the Tallahassee Improvement Association, which the nomination calls the first organization devoted to beautifying the city, and in the decade that followed it named and planted five more parks in the center of the street. Its work was carried on by the Tallahassee Woman's Club and the Tallahassee Garden Club.

The present names date from 1938, when the Tallahassee Garden Club and the City named and planted all seven parks.

The Improvement Association's names were Randolph, Bloxham, Lafayette, Cherokee and Duval, according to the National Register nomination. Lafayette Park lay between Adams and Duval streets, Cherokee between Duval and Bronough, and Duval between Bronough and Boulevard. In 1938, the nomination says, Leon, Lewis, Bloxham and Randolph kept their names and the three western parks were renamed McCarty, Greene and Cherokee. E. Peck Greene, it says, was also consultant to the Garden Club in planting the parks.

Two naming differences remain between the sources. The 1979 nomination calls the center park Leon Park, while the City's current parks map lists it as Ponce De Leon Park; the map also uses the full name Genevieve Randolph Park for the easternmost block. The Museum of Florida History uses old maps to show the pace of change: an 1885 view shows McCarty Street in front of the Knott House as one wide dirt street with trees down the middle and the park system not yet fully developed, a 1909 map shows the newly renamed Park Avenue, and by a 1926 aerial view the parks are more defined.

West of Boulevard Street the pattern changes. The nomination explains that the city cemetery interrupted the 200-foot strip there, so Park Avenue continues west only as a median with a single row of live oaks. The City's parks map also lists Doug Burnette Park at 0.7 acres.

Park Avenue is lined by some of downtown's oldest institutions, from the 1829 cemetery at its west end to the Knott House beside Lewis Park.

The Florida Department of State lists the Knott House Museum at 301 East Park Avenue, says its administration passed to the Museum of Florida History in 1997, and says the museum is currently closed while the historic interior is preserved and new exhibits are created. The museum's own guide notes that the porch looks out on Lewis Park, bordered by Calhoun and Gadsden streets. The Leon County Main Library is at 200 West Park Avenue; during renovations the Park Avenue entrance is closed and visitors use the Call Street entrance.

At the west end, the City of Tallahassee says the Old City Cemetery is the oldest public cemetery in Tallahassee, established in 1829 by the Territorial Legislative Council and acquired by the city in 1840. The nomination adds that the Old City Cemetery and St. John's Episcopal Cemetery adjoin the western end of Park Avenue and that the city cemetery takes in part of the original western cleared strip. The same document lists National Register buildings on the avenue's borders, including the First Presbyterian Church, completed in 1838, and The Columns, completed in 1830, and says the 1936 federal building at 110 East Park Avenue stands on the old courthouse block on the north side of Leon Park.

The Union Bank building first stood on the west side of Adams Street between College and Park avenues; it was moved in 1971 to Apalachee Parkway, where it now operates as a free museum, the Department of State says.

The parks host the City's Winter Festival and Springtime Tallahassee's Jubilee, and groups of 50 or more need a City park permit.

On the Chain of Parks itself, the City's Winter Festival page puts the parade judges platform on South Monroe Street at Bloxham Park and the Candy Cane Lane display in McCarty Park for the 40th festival, set for Saturday, December 5, 2026. Candy Cane Lane opens that afternoon and then runs nightly through December 20, while the Jingle Bell Run starts at 6:15 p.m. and the nighttime parade at 7:10 p.m. on festival day.

Springtime Tallahassee lists its next Jubilee in the Park for Saturday, April 3, 2027, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. in the downtown Chain of Parks, with pre-parade entertainment in Ponce de Leon Park and a community stage in McCarty Park, by the organizer's schedule.

The City's park permit application says applications for any site must be made at least 15 working days ahead by email, are taken first come, first served, and are required for groups of 50 or more; a paid permit gives reserved, exclusive use of an eligible area, while a no-fee notice grants no exclusive use. Larger public events go through the Special Events Division at 850-891-3885, which asks for 30 to 60 days for most permits. The Parks, Recreation and Neighborhood Affairs office is at 1201 Myers Park Drive, 850-891-3866.

Last verified: October 18, 2026, against the 1979 National Register nomination for the Park Avenue Historic District, the City parks map, park permit form, event planning and Winter Festival pages, the Museum of Florida History's Knott House exhibit and guide, the county GIS heritage page and the Springtime Tallahassee Jubilee listing.