Willow Grove Park

I am waiting for pictures to upload to my computer, and found myself traveling back in time to the days of working at Gap Kids in Willow Grove Park.  Right smack dab on the second floor, I once stood selling flame retardant PJ's to snobby, uptight parents while some of my best friends were upstairs chasing chickens at Master Wok.  Wait, I am digressing.  It is an awesome mall; in fact, it is my mall of choice.  I love the ambiance, the stores, but most of all - I love the history.

Willow Grove Park was an amusement park located in, you guessed it, Willow Grove, PA, and my guess is it sits about 5-10 miles outside the Northwest Philadelphia city line.  The Park operated for eighty years from 1896 until the 1975 season.  After that, the ground on which the park was laid vacant until 1982 when the boom of the shopping malls hit.  The mall now pays homage to its amusement park days, complete with amusement park banners, horses from the merry go round, and in 2001, a merry go round was installed and now is located inside the mall. 

Willow Grove Park was originally conceived as a means to get away for the weekend for busy Philadelphians.  As you see, Philadelphia, quite obviously, was not as big geographically in 1896 as it is today.  To Philadelphians, getting away to Montgomery County was a vacation, a home away from home.  The park was also created to encourage people to use the new trolley line, created by the Peoples Traction Company, who in turned created the park.  What a promotion!  Obviously, at the the turn of the century and at the height of the Industrial Revolution, trolley cars and trains were seen as amazing new ideas to get people places quicker.  It all makes sense now!  

Willow Grove Park was the premiere amusement park in its heyday, and continued to be important until the bigger franchises of amusement parks came to be, and people could go other places now with the invention of cars, highways, and eventually airplanes.  DUH!  Okay, I feel like I am talking to my third graders, so I need to move on......

.......One of the biggest attractions in the park was the music pavilion, at which John Phillip Sousa and his band played every year but one between 1901 and 1926. The pavilion was demolished in March 1959.  Remember his hit song, "Be Kind to Your Webbed Footed Friends"?  Okay, again digressing.  

So if you are ever interested in hitting up some killer stores within a historic area, be sure to check out the Willow Grove Park (or Willow Grove Mall for the locals).  

http://willowgroveparkmall.com/