By Blake Surina
In 1907, when Regents Park was being planned, public spaces and city parks were still ideas in their infancy. Termed the
America Beautiful Movement, its founder Frederick Law Olmsted, greatly influenced the creation and design of Fircrest’s budding community. It was thought with proper urban landscape design, a vibrant community could be created by having public spaces where the citizens would be free to interact with one another, and designating parks where beauty and nature could be made available to all residents, not just those who could afford to live in large estates in the suburbs.
Landscape architect Roy Thompson pre-planned this new community using features like wide promenading boulevards, streets that would flow and meander in harmony with the natural contours of the land, and a centrally located park surrounding a manmade “Spring Lake”. Thompson, 10 years earlier, worked with landscape architect Edward Otto Schwagerl, who designed Bird Lake at Wr