Lee Memorial Park Historic District

Lee Memorial Park (now Legends Park), a 300-acre park on the southern edge of the city of Petersburg, was established in 1921. The park is composed of a variety of features both recreational and horticultural. It exemplifies national trends in landscape design and is a relatively rare manifestation of an important but little-known women’s relief program of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) during the Great Depression. Under the WPA and the Petersburg Garden Club, unemployed African American women cleared land, built trails, and planted and labeled flowers and shrubbery to create the Lee Park Wild Flower and Bird Sanctuary. The legacy of the project has been preserved in the Lee Park Herbarium, a collection of pressed specimens of numerous species of plants in the sanctuary. These are complemented by 238 watercolors of the specimens by Petersburg artist Bessie Niemeyer Marshall.​​

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• Listing, Virginia Department of Historic Resources

• Nomination form, Virginia Landmarks Register & National Register of Historic Places