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Acorn Park, Silver Spring, MD

Photo: Farragutful, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Cropped and resized.

Sports & Outdoors

Acorn Park

A compact downtown green space in Silver Spring with a historic acorn-shaped gazebo, a spring grotto, and shade trees.

8060 Newell St., Silver Spring, MD 20910 · Silver Spring, MD

About Acorn Park

This tiny park in central Silver Spring centers on a rustic 19th-century gazebo shaped like an acorn, along with a spring grotto and mature trees. The gazebo was originally a decorative garden structure on the estate of Francis Preston Blair, a newspaper publisher, who was drawn to a mica-flecked spring on the property around 1840 and later named his plantation Silver Spring. The gazebo honors an oak tree where Blair proposed to his wife. The Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission acquired the small triangular site in 1942 to protect the spring from a planned road extension. The gazebo was relocated to public land beside the spring in 1946, and the redesigned grotto was dedicated in 1955. Visitors can find benches, a bike rack, and art installations on the grounds.

  • #urban park
  • #gazebo
  • #grotto
  • #history
  • #Silver Spring

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