Neighborhood volunteer keeps Mansion Hill pocket park beautiful

Mansion Hill resident Joe Bonardi has donated hundreds of hours of his own time to maintaining the sculpted beauty of Period Garden Park.

This pocket park at the corner of E. Gorham and N. Pinckney Sts.  is a favorite  public greenspace among neighborhood residents, a place where you can feel can feel secluded and peaceful while sitting right next to E. Gorham St., one of downtown’s busiest arteries.

Bonardi leads a team of volunteers who mow, weed, and clean the park, tend the perennial plants, shrubs and trees, and work with Madison Police to patrol it.

He has worked with the city Parks Division to repair and maintain the carved sandstone and concrete steps built over 100 years ago. The Madison Trust recently made a Preservation Projects Grant to help replace the deteriorating steps leading from the Gorham St.  sidewalk.

Bonardi has even restored two brass plaques installed by the city highlighting the history of the park and the Mansion Hill neighborhood.  Through a trial and error process he developed the methodology using black primer and gold leaf paint to restore their dignity and legibility.

Once the front yard of the adjacent Elisha Keyes house the parcel was nearly infilled with an apartment building in 1972.  That proposal was blocked and in 1975 the lot was purchased with a combination of private, city, and state funding and became city property.  An asphalt parking lot was removed and a park was designed to emulate the type of garden that would have been typical during this neighborhood’s Victorian era heyday.

Category: Executive Director's Blog