Rittenhouse Square’s lawn took a beating during the pandemic. Now, it’s being restored for $500,000.
Always a beloved gathering place, the famed lawns became even more popular when people needed to spend more time outdoors. As a result, some areas had basically turned into complete dust bowls.
The grass at Rittenhouse Square was heavily used in normal years, but it took an extra trampling during the pandemic as folks sought to escape outside.
Now, the iconic park’s lawn will be dug up and restored over the next four years on the heels of a recent bench replacement program. The lawn renovation will cost an estimated $500,000.
“It’s certainly one of the most well-loved public spaces in Philadelphia,” said June Armstrong, executive director of Friends of Rittenhouse Square, a nonprofit that works to preserve, protect, and beautify the square.
Crews from BrightView Landscape in Norristown renovated a pilot plot on the square last year as a test, and Armstrong said that went well. So the full project was recently started to methodically tackle 22 individual sections of lawn each of the next four years. Sections will be fenced off as needed.
The lawn was last replaced more than 20 years ago. The park at Rittenhouse Square is 6.6 acres. The lawn is about half that when walkways and gardens are subtracted.
“At the height of the COVID pandemic, people really rediscovered and fell in love with their parks again,” Armstrong said. “Rittenhouse Square got a ton of use. On beautiful days under normal health conditions, Rittenhouse Square is full of people. But we received a lot of intensive use during COVID. We found that a lot of the areas of the square, especially the larger gathering places, were really in dire need of being addressed. Some of those areas had basically turned into complete dust bowls.”
In larger sections, crews will lay down tall fescue sod. Some areas will be aerated and overseeded to strengthen the lawn. Mixes of fescue, rye, or bluegrass will be used depending on whether a section gets a lot of sun, shade, or both.
The goal, Armstrong said, is to let the lawn “establish really healthy, healthy, deep roots.”
The new lawn will also help ease stormwater runoff worsened by the “dust bowl” areas of lawn, which allows soil to flow directly into drains during rains, reducing nutrients.
“We’re tackling each section of the lawn based on need,” Armstrong said.
Areas of the south side of the square that were addressed in the pilot program are “now looking very healthy,” Armstrong said. Now, crews are working on the 18th Street side.
“We walked through the square this morning and the crews were out getting things ready,” Armstrong said Monday.
In 2022, she said, 145 teak benches were replaced with benches made of more rot-resistant ipe wood with aluminum-coated arms.
The lawn restoration work is made possible through a $200,000 state grant, and an anticipated matching $160,000 grant from the Knight Foundation. Friends of Rittenhouse is still raising money from neighbors and community leaders for the balance.
Rittenhouse Square was planned in 1682 by William Penn and his surveyor Thomas Holme, making it the fourth oldest park in the United States, according to Friends of Rittenhouse Square.
State Sen. Nikil Saval said his office and that of State Rep. Ben Waxman advocated for the grant, which was sought last year and approved in January.
“Rittenhouse Square is the heritage of every Philadelphian,” Saval said. “It’s a widely used park, and a major institution in the city and much treasured green space. But the actual work of restoring and maintaining the lawns … is a hugely time consuming and expensive endeavor. We thought it was a worthy initiative.”