9th Street Pedestrian Bridge
Woodlawn Trustees, founded in 1911 by industrialist William P. Bancroft, is dedicated to continuing Bancroft’s mission of thoughtful, affordable neighborhood development and preservation of green space in and around the City of Wilmington. Bancroft gave the trustees the directive to manage its land ownership for the benefit of the people so that affordable housing with access to open spaces can be maintained into the future. The park anchoring “The Flats” neighborhood developed by Bancroft is one of Woodlawn Trustees’ recent collaborations with the City of Wilmington and the community, and is a continuation of Bancroft’s legacy.
In the early 1900’s after visiting the planned community of Bournville in England, Bancroft was inspired to create a similar neighborhood of pleasant affordable housing in Wilmington. “The Flats” neighborhood is situated along the leafy parkway now named after Bancroft. Bancroft consulted with landscape architect Frederick law Olmstead on the placement of a park at 9th Street where the continuity of the parkway is disrupted by railroad tracks, taking a jog and dividing it into upper and lower sections with some space leftover in the offset. In addition to a park, Bancroft and Olmstead envisioned a diagonal pedestrian walkway spanning the tracks to connect the neighborhood to upper Bancroft Parkway. Bancroft died in 1928 before the project was started. The Great Depression intervened, and the spot eventually became a Division of Motor Vehicles instead.
