Gen. Charles S. Farnsworth County Park, also known as Farnsworth Park, is a Los Angeles County

Los Angeles County, California

Los Angeles County is a county in the U.S. state of California. As of 2010 U.S. Census, the county had a population of 9,818,605, making it the most populous county in the United States. Los Angeles County alone is more populous than 42 individual U.S. states...

 park and National Register of Historic Places

National Register of Historic Places

The National Register of Historic Places is the United States government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects deemed worthy of preservation...

 district (site #97000027) in Altadena, California

Altadena, California

Altadena is an unincorporated area and census-designated place in Los Angeles County, California, United States, approximately from the downtown Los Angeles Civic Center, and directly north of the city of Pasadena, California...

.

The land was purchased by Los Angeles County in 1921 for use as a nursery

Nursery (horticulture)

A nursery is a place where plants are propagated and grown to usable size. They include retail nurseries which sell to the general public, wholesale nurseries which sell only to businesses such as other nurseries and to commercial gardeners, and private nurseries which supply the needs of...

. When the County built new nurseries in the 1930s, a movement to turn the land into a county park was spearheaded by General Charles S. Farnsworth

Charles S. Farnsworth

Charles Stewart Farnsworth was an American general and civic leader.-Early life:Farnsworth was born in Lycoming County, Pennsylvania and attended local public schools...

 and William O. Davies. Farnsworth designed the park, and supervised its grading and landscaping. Davies began planning for a community center. Funds for the construction of the community center came from grants from the Public Works Administration

Public Works Administration

The Public Works Administration , part of the New Deal of 1933, was a large-scale public works construction agency in the United States headed by Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes. It was created by the National Industrial Recovery Act in June 1933 in response to the Great Depression...

. The park was completed in 1934. The park was originally named Altadena Park.

The park project included a two-story arts and crafts

Arts and Crafts movement

Arts and Crafts was an international design philosophy that originated in England and flourished between 1860 and 1910 , continuing its influence until the 1930s...

 American craftsman

American Craftsman

The American Craftsman Style, or the American Arts and Crafts Movement, is an American domestic architectural, interior design, landscape design, applied arts, and decorative arts style and lifestyle philosophy that began in the last years of the 19th century. As a comprehensive design and art...

style building that was later christened the William D. Davies Memorial Building. The park was renamed in honor of Farnsworth in 1939.

It was placed on the Register in 1997 for its significance as a recreation and architecture site.