Fairmount Park carries Riverside Cultural Heritage Board designation as Landmark No. 69. The open-air bandshell sitting inside it, the one that hosts free summer concerts every Wednesday night, holds its own separate designation as Landmark No. 10. Two hundred acres of lakes, groves and lawn got protected status well after a single roofed stage did.
If you live in Hawarden Hills and have spent a July evening on a lawn chair listening to a Motown cover band, you've been sitting inside a smaller, older piece of civic memory than the park around you. That's the kind of detail that doesn't show up on a map, and it's a decent way into what actually shapes a weekend for people who live a few minutes south of the park, not a few blocks inside it.
The stage that got there first
Arthur Burnett Benton designed the bandshell in 1920, working in the Mission style he was known for around Southern California. The Olmsted Brothers firm, sons of Frederick Law Olmsted, had already laid out the park's overall grounds nearly a decade earlier in 1911. So the sequence isn't that the stage predates the park physically. It's that the city's landmark ledger protected the small building with a lower number than the much larger property surrounding it, a detail that only matters if you already love the place enough to wonder why.
That stage is still doing its original job. This summer's Concerts in the Park series ran every Wednesday from 6 to 9 p.m. through July 29, with a lineup that moved through Motown, old-school Latin, salsa and cumbia, and closed with an R&B night. July 1 doubled as a patriotic show, pairing a set from the Riverside Concert Band with a drone display tied to the country's 250th anniversary. The series is free and returns on a similar schedule each summer.
| Date | Act | Style |
|---|---|---|
| June 24 | Stone Soul | Motown tribute |
| July 1 | The Convertibles Band | Patriotic rock and soul, plus drone show |
| July 8 | Bumptown | Old school and Latin |
| July 15 | Vilma Diaz y La Sonora | Salsa and cumbia |
| July 22 | Pop Gun Rerun | '80s music |
| July 29 | B.I.G. | R&B and old school |
The rest of the 200 acres carries its own weight without needing a plaque to prove it. Stewart's Boathouse still rents pedal boats on Lake Evans, including handicap-accessible models. The lawn bowling green opened in the 1920s and is still active. A retired World War II amphibious vehicle known as the Water Buffalo stands in the park as a memorial. The Rose Garden, fully enclosed by wrought iron fencing, hosts everything from wedding photos to community gatherings under a small gazebo. None of it needed a separate landmark number to earn a place in how people actually use the park. The bandshell is just the one piece the city decided to protect on its own terms, ahead of everything around it.
The park without a plaque
Not everyone in Hawarden Hills makes the drive north to Fairmount Park every week, and they don't need to. The neighborhood has its own answer on Harbart Drive: Hawarden Hills Park, a small, unlandmarked stretch of playground equipment, picnic tables and open grass that functions as the actual daily gathering spot for people who live here. It won't turn up on a historic registry and it isn't trying to. It's the place where a Tuesday afternoon gets spent, not a Wednesday-night event.
That contrast is worth sitting with. Fairmount Park protects its bandshell with a formal number in a city ledger. Hawarden Hills Park protects nothing on paper and gets used constantly anyway. Both are real. They just serve different parts of a week.
What the bike ride says about the plaza
If Fairmount Park is where Hawarden Hills goes to hear something, Riverside Plaza on Central Avenue is where it goes to run errands, and it has quietly become the starting line for a piece of the county's cycling calendar. The Citrus Classic Bike Ride launches from Riverside Plaza every October, drawing regional riders who never set foot in any of the stores before pushing off.
The plaza itself has had a few identities. Riverside's Wikipedia entry on the property notes it opened as the city's first mall, was enclosed at one point, then reopened as an open-air center after a $12 million renovation in the early 2010s. Today it's anchored by Trader Joe's, Marshalls and Regal Cinemas, with a mix of smaller tenants nearby that don't show up in any developer's marketing copy, including Nordstrom Rack, Forget Me Not Antiques, Renaissance Book Shop, and Foster Army Animal Rescue. It's the kind of mix that makes a Saturday errand run double as a browse.
The bike ride connects back to something older than the plaza. Riverside built its identity on citrus, and the same groves that once defined the region's economy left their mark on neighborhoods like Hawarden Hills, where mature trees and generous lots trace back to that agricultural period. A cycling event that starts behind a Trader Joe's and heads out toward the same countryside those groves came from isn't decoration. It's one of the few annual events that ties a modern shopping center directly to the reason this part of Riverside looks the way it does.
Two anchors, two different jobs
None of this requires anyone to choose a favorite. Fairmount Park is where the city decided a piece of architecture deserved formal protection before the ground around it did. Riverside Plaza is where a shopping center quietly hosts a countywide cycling event once a year, tucked behind the same stores that handle a weekly grocery run. Hawarden Hills Park does the unglamorous daily work neither of the bigger anchors is built for.
Living near all three means a resident gets to pick which kind of Saturday they want without driving far for any of them. That's not something a listing photo captures, and it's not something a first-time visitor would notice walking through once. It's the kind of detail that only shows up after you've lived here long enough to wonder why the bandshell has its own number.
If you're weighing a move within Hawarden Hills, thinking about what your current home might be worth in a neighborhood built on this kind of long-term character, or just curious how these details show up in local comps, Adam Schwarz has spent years working this exact stretch of Riverside and put together a closer look at the neighborhood on our Hawarden Hills guide. For a direct read on what your property could bring in today's market, reach out to 1903 Realty and get your home value.
