Doyle Park

Though small in size, the former Doyle Playground site, located just above the Tileston and Hollingsworth Dam, is one of Hyde Park’s only windows on the Neponset River. With our support a community led organization created a vision for a new park that will provide a new green gathering place for the neighborhood. The preliminary design includes open lawns for play, benches and picnic tables, an informal stage for community performances a natural play space using logs and existing boulders, and a river path connecting down stream past the dam to the Shops at Riverwood and up stream along the proposed Hyde Park Riverwalk to West Street. Once completed Doyle Park will become a gateway to nature for a community that was once cut off from the river.

Background: TOn this one-acre park was an active playground managed by the DCR which fell into disrepair and was dismantled leaving behind a vacant lot surrounded by a chain link-fence.  In 2018 this forgotten place was reimagined through a community driven design process led by landscape architects from Offshoots, Inc. and the Horsley Witten Group.  As part of their advocacy campaign to build the park the community undertook a massive clean up of the area which included removal of rusting fences and piles of trash, clearing of invasive trees, removal of asphalt, seeding and mowing a broad lawn for play, and  painting a mural on a wall.  The advocacy worked and the DCR finally agreed to take on the Doyle Park project.