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Clifton Park is a public urban park located between the Coldstream-Homestead-Montebello and Waverly neighborhoods to the west and the Belair-Edison community to the north in the northeast section of Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.A.. It is roughly bordered by Erdman Avenue (Md. Rt. 151) to the northeast, Sinclair Lane to the south, Harford Road (Md. Rt. 147) to the northwest and Belair Road (U.S. Route 1) to the southeast.〔(Clifton Park. ) Department of Recreation and Parks, Baltimore.〕 The eighteen-hole Clifton Park Golf Course, which is the site of the annual Clifton Park Golf Tournament,〔(Clifton Park (venues & attractions). ) Baltimore Fun Guide.〕 occupies the north side of the park. == History == The land on which Clifton Park sits was once farmland. Built around 1803, the home was originally the summer residence of Capt. Henry Thompson, (1774-1837). Born in Sheffield, England, he came to Baltimore around 1794. Became a well-known merchant, financier and company director, he also was a very public-spirited citizen and used his knowledge of horses in military matters. Serving as a cavalry officer in the Maryland Militia, of which a part was the "Baltimore Light Dragoons" which he joined in 1809 and elected captain. Later organized in 1813, the "First Baltimore Horse Artillery" who defended Baltimore from the British attack during the War of 1812 at the Battle of Baltimore with its Bombardment of Fort McHenry, the Battle of North Point, and the stand-off at Loudenschlager's Hill/Hampstead Hill (now Patterson Park in East Baltimore, on September 12-13-14, 1814, celebrated as "Defenders' Day". He was assigned by Brig. Gen. John Stricker, commander of the Third Brigade (also known as the Baltimore City Brigade) of the Maryland Militia, to carry messages between Bladensburg, Maryland (in Prince George's County) and the nearby National Capital of Washington, D.C. during the first phase of the British attack and the tragic Battle of Bladensburg during the Chesapeake Bay campaign in August 1814. Later he and his mounted unit served as the personal bodyguard of Maj. Gen. Samuel Smith, overall commander of the State Militia and the forces defending Baltimore in September 1814. Along with the former mansion of "Surrey" of Col. Joseph Sterrett, (1773-1821), commander of the 5th Md. Regiment, further east of the Town, (now greatly changed/damaged and used as a community center in Armistead Gardens, off Erdman Avenue (Md. Rt. 151) and Federal Street), it is considered the only two structures besides the 1793 Flag House & Star-Spangled Banner Museum of Mary Pickersgill at East Pratt and Albemarle Streets, to be a residence still extant from the famous attack which inspired the writing of our National Anthem, "Star Spangled Banner". Later in private and business life, Thompson served as President of the Baltimore and Harford Turnpike Company which began building the northeastern spoke road out of the City now known as Harford Road (Md. Rt. 147). Later he was part of the Poppleton Commission which laid out additional grids of streets and blocks for the city's future expansion and prepared a well-known map and diagram of the new sections and the larger city by Thomas Poppleton in 1818, resulting in the first major annexation of the territory around the City known as "The Precincts" from surrounding rural Baltimore County. He also served as member of the boards of directors of the Baltimore and Port Deposit Railroad, the third major Baltimore railroad chartered in Maryland and one of the first in America, (later merged into the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad - eventually into the Pennsylvania Railroad by 1881), the Bank of Baltimore, the landmark domed Merchants' Exchange Building, (designed by Benjamin Henry Latrobe, 1815-1820), the Baltimore Board of Trade, and the Maryland Agricultural Society. He was honored with the position of being Marshall of the Proceedings at the Cornerstone-Laying for both the Battle Monument, (on North Calvert Street, between East Fayette and Lexington Streets), on the first Defenders' Day anniversary of the engagement, September 12, 1815, and the iconic Washington Monument on "Independence Day", July 4, 1815. In later years Thompson also served as the Grand Marshall of the festivities in Baltimore surrounding the return and the visit to America of the French patriot and American supporter, Marquis de Lafayette, former aide to commanding General George Washington and also General in our Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War in 1824. Thompson maintained ownership of the estate until about 1835, however dying two years later in 1837. In 1838, it was bought by local merchant, financier and philanthropist Johns Hopkins, (1795-1873), for his estate (along with his city mansion on West Saratoga Street between North Charles and Cathedral-Liberty-South Sharp Streets, next to and just east of the old St. Paul's Church Rectory where he died), and was later developed with a nearby lake and a large sculpture collection.〔 Later, in 1858, it was converted into an Italianate villa by the locally-famous architects John Rudolph Niernsee, (1814-1885), and James Crawford Neilson, (1816-1900), with a tall landmark tower added. It was originally planned by Mr. Hopkins to locate the campus of his future bequest of The Johns Hopkins University there on that substantial property which later opened in February 1876, but was relocated by the appointed Board of Trustees and its first President, Daniel Coit Gilman for monetary reasons and to utilize the rich research-reference assets of the (Peabody Institute and the George Peabody Library), plus the nearby location of a possible prep secondary school in the Baltimore City College, the City's well-regarded high school and third oldest in America, having been founded in 1839. In addition, in order to preserve as much of the funds developed by the interest on the forbidden use of the endowment's principal, to first situate itself in several downtown buildings built along North Howard and Little Ross/West Centre Streets (between West Centre and West Monument Streets in the southwest corner of the Mount Vernon-Belvedere neighborhood. There the J.H.U. remained for the first three decades of its existence. By the middle 1890s, with a divided Board and the lower rate of return on the Hopkins endowment which was mostly invested in Baltimore and Ohio Railroad stock which was undergoing a financial crisis and had lost considerable value, the University sold the acreage of the old "Clifton" estate to the City for use as a park for the northeast sections, temporarily giving up on its dream of a larger, more spacious and distinctive campus for its burgeoning world-wide academic reputation as the "first modern university in America". It was not until about 1900, that additional efforts for a larger more suburban campus were made once again and came to fruition through the efforts of William Wyman and others through the purchase and donation of the wooded Homewood estate (built around 1801 for his son, Charles Carroll, Jr. by Charles Carroll of Carrollton, (1737-1832), and inherited by Wyman from the son's (also known later as Charles Carroll of Homewood) estate, with its landmark Georgian/Federal-style architecture mansion, to the north along the west side of North Charles Street, adjacent to the west of the old Peabody Heights neighborhood, (later renamed Charles Village in 1967). Hopkins' first new buildings at Homewood were constructed in 1914-1915 to match the style of the old mansion, and their move followed during the years afterwards. In 1916, Peabody Institute trustees gave Baltimore City "On the Trail," a 7-foot-4 bronze sculpture of a Native American man created by local artist Edward Berge, and it was placed upon a boulder in Clifton Park. The statue is reported to have been generally overlooked by those visiting the park, though it has been subjected to periodic vandalism. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Clifton Park, Baltimore」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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