Ferry Park at South 14^th and Cushman is Tacoma’s very first park. This tiny park, just a little over one-half acre, was donated by C.P. and Evelyn Ferry on May 14, 1883. Colonel Ferry platted the C.P. Ferry Addition to the city and set aside this piece of land to show the new and growing City of Tacoma how the European custom of small parks scattered throughout the residence districts could add charm and beauty.

In 1902 the Tacoma Daily Ledger reported that Colonel Ferry ordered five pieces of handsome statuary for Ferry Park. He sent a draft to Brussels with an order for the purchase of two sphinx, two griffins, and a large piece for the center of the park titled Lioness and Her Cubs. The sphinx and griffins were to be placed at the two entrances of the park.  So far only two pictures of these statues when they were in Ferry Park have been found, and you can see them on interpretive sign in the park today.

These statues were installed in the park as planned but removed by the Park District sometime in the late 1920s. A 1928 article in the Tacoma Daily Ledger bemoaned the loss of the statues.

“Art for art’s sake is all right in Greenwich Village or Paris but art in Tacoma should be discreetly modest if it is to be exposed to public view. Because residents near Ferry Park reasoned in such fashion, two statues, one a lioness and two cubs, the other a sphinx, have been relegated to a dump way up behind the workshops at Point Defiance Park where visitors seldom penetrate. Of course, being stone, they maintain the attitudes into which they were chiseled many years ago. The lioness glares at an unseen danger threatening her cubs and the sphinx lady, after the manner of all sphinxes, just stares. And maybe they are just as happy as in the days when they presided over Ferry Park with youngsters playing hide and seek through the surrounding shrubbery, but they don’t look it. It must be awfully tough on a statue to be banned from public gaze. And it’s quite true, of course, that it must have been mealtime when the artist sculpted the lioness and her cubs, for one of the youngsters reposes in an informal attitude of perpetual feeding. But that’s entirely natural, isn’t it?”

Although complaining neighbors may have played a role, the 1920s was also the era when organized playground programs from the nationwide Recreation movement began. Ferry Park was one of the first parks to have summer recreational programs, so the Park Board ordered the five statues removed. Their location today is unknown.

As part of the organized recreational activities and games in the parks a field house was built and equipment purchased thanks to a $2,000 donation from the Kiwanis Club in 1928.

By the 1940s, the Park District decided to remove the existing play equipment due to “controversy in the neighborhood.” People living directly across from the park did not want play equipment, just a pretty grass covered park, so the Park District removed the play equipment and cut down all the trees.

This situation didn’t last long. Neighborhood children protested with a parade including homemade banners and slogans like, ‘Keep us off the Streets,’ ‘We have no place to play’, and ‘We want a park and playground.” The children’s voices were heard and play equipment was reinstalled in the park.

The final decision was that Ferry Park is big enough for both a playground and a park. With playground equipment centralized on one side of the park, the other end is left open for all to enjoy the charm and beauty of nature in a residential setting.

Large Play Structure Replacement

Updated January 2025

• In March 2023, for the safety of the children in our community, the large play structure at Ferry Park was removed. The equipment had been repaired multiple times, and replacements were no longer available for parts that had failed.
• In April 2023, Parks Tacoma launched an interactive website to collect input from the community to help design the replacement playground.
• In June 2023, we shared the survey data and our designer developed playground concepts. Families and neighbors turned out for a fun pop-up event on June 24 to kick off the voting for two new playgrounds that will be installed at Ferry Park by Spring/Summer 2025.
• You spoke, we listened! Community has voted online for their favorite design concepts for playgrounds designed for both 2-5 year-olds and 5-12 year-olds, as well as their favorite colors. Click the button below to view the final playground design!
• Construction began in early January 2025 and is expected to be completed in Spring 2025.