Then I thought I'd try looking for this mysterious park I spotted a map while I was figuring out where all our city's elementary schools are. To my surprise, I did manage to find Coombs Park (I have the world's worst sense of direction), but the reason it's not featured on Culver City's parks website is because it's pretty much an oversize traffic circle with about 12 trees and some grass. So, after going zero for two, I decided if we were going to have a park day at all, we should go back to re-explore Veterans Memorial Park.
Veterans Memorial Park is the city's biggest and most prominent park, all the Parks and Recreation offices and special resources are located there, and it shares two blocks with quite a few other notable facilities. We'd visited it once before on a weekend, but we happened to arrive as the Burmese Expatriate Association was having their annual family picnic (no really, that's basically what was happening!) so the playground facilities were overrun and it was hard to see what was what. There were no large gatherings in the playground today, and all the facilities were open because it was a weekday, so we got to poke around a fair amount.
The central feature of Veterans Memorial Park is the Veterans Memorial Building, at the corner of Overland and Culver, which was built in the early 1950s in honor of World War II veterans. The 120-foot tower is closed to the public because it's not structurally sound--and since the elevators are apparently broken, the only access these days is the stairs--but the loudspeakers on the top of the tower play chimes every hour on the hour. (They also decorate the tower during the holidays with a Christmas tree made of lights.)
The building also features a "rotunda room" that's visible from the street, a 1500-seat auditorium and a number of meeting rooms that can be used by the public. The rest of the Veterans Memorial Park complex includes the Culver City Plunge swimming pool (which dates to the 1940s), the Culver City Historical Society archives and visitors center, Culver City Parks and Recreation Department HQ, a teen center, tennis courts, baseball fields and a playground. Across the street heading north on Overland is the gorgeous Culver City Senior Center, and across the street heading west on Washington is a National Guard armory, an Amvets Post, the Culver City Community Garden and a fabulously decrepit old building that is shared by the local Boy Scouts of America troop and, I am not making this up, the Culver City Rock & Mineral Club. (And they really do have rocks and minerals in storage behind the building!)
Created in 1949 and renovated in the 1990s, the Culver City Plunge municipal swimming pool remains incredibly popular with locals. Jackson thought the traffic cone was very interesting. |
Here's the playground at Veterans Memorial Park, which shares space with picnic tables and barbecue facilities. |
When Jackson lost interest in the playground, we walked down to the Culver City Community Garden, which happened to be unlocked because one of the gardeners was working inside. Jackson enjoyed the piles of dirt and was especially thrilled to find a whole bucket of rocks. I tried to be all "Hey look, a ripening pumpkin! Ooh, Swiss chard!" but Jackson was all, "Lady, I don't know if you are aware, but they have ROCKS here. ROCKS!" |
"Bye-bye!" |
3 comments:
Wow. That really takes you back to a time when cities had money to build great structures for the public good. Now it seems like we're just scraping up bond and levy money to keep those buildings, pools and playgrounds up and running.
Exactly. Culver seems to be holding its own--the senior center was just built, and the local schools and parks are doing quite well and being expanded in many ways, but by and large it is Rough Out There.
For information regarding the studio is not correct.... Sony is the parent company to Columbia Pictures and TriStar... so Columbia is still housed on that property... the property was MGM Studios from 1924 to 1986. You neglected to mention why the tower was constructed... you also neglected to mention the history of the property on which the senior center stands
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