Arkādija Park

In 1852 , Counsil General Vērmanis purchased 1.1 hectares of land and immediately turned to serious gardening. There was  a lovley garden at his home, and he grew rare palm trees in a hothouse.

In 1896 the garden was purchased by the Riga City Council, and the gardens  directorate was entrusted with turning it into public park to known as Torņakalns Park. Georg Kuphaldt undertook the job and, utilizing his botanic skills and gardening abilities, created a beautiful landscape park. Kuphaldt shifted the bed of the Mārupīte river, installed waterfalls, dug ponds and built small bridges.

www.spoki.lv

There is very interesing described Arkādijas park's story in book by A.Kolbergs, L.Balodis and A.Liepiņa "Rīga for the curious traveller":

In the middle of 19th century the consul of Prussia Christian Heinrich von Wehrmann bought several building lots from their owner  in the park territory. He had green houses with palm trees, grapevines, apricots, and other rare tropical pants, just like  the ones at Sans-Souci in  Potsdam. And then he died. A series of owners tried to make money from the garden, but with the little success. Finally in  1896 the city of Riga  bought was left of Wehrmann's estate, because in Torņakalns area there was not a single park. The city kept buying land and it is became available and added to the meadows that it already owned. Ponds were dug in the meadows and the sand used to build  up to rest  of parkland. In order to earn money from further park development, the park was  rented to a brewery, the forerunner of present  day Aldaris. The brewery immediately built a restaurant.

But in the 1902 the restaurant burned to the ground. And new one was built and  that too  burded down. The third restaurant did not burn down. In 1958 it was rebuilt into a movie theater. Then it was abandoned to the  ravareges of time and of the homeless. In 2000 the local vandals  burned down the bandstand.

The plan for Torņakalna parks was drawn by the city landscape architect Georg Kuphaldt. He must have been delighted when the building of Torņakalna railway station, railway tracks and streetcar tracks all necessitated the changing of the river bed of Mārupīte. Before letting the  stream across Uzvaras parks (Victory Square) and enter Daugava, Kuphaldt ran it through Arkādija. He could  make it  twist and turn, make  cascades and waterfalls. Mārupīte became the most beautiful feature in the park.

During World War I  the park suffered badly when refugees driven out  of Kurzeme stayed there, farm people with their  carts and farm animals. In order not to leave anything to the Germans, the Russian army drove people out of their homes, burned the buildings, and ordered them to destroy their own rippening crops."

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