The "A Few Lancaster Treasures: Part I" Story

It was an ordinary day.  Reading a few of my favorite Lancaster Facebook pages and found a few locations and people whom I had never heard about before.  As I opened one post on "Remember When.....in Lancaster, PA,"  I found a few old color postcards that displayed scenes in what was known as Barrose Terrace in Lancaster.  I'm not sure if the postcards were reproductions of color photograph or hand-tinted black and white photographs.  The postcards were amazing and of a place in Lancaster that I never knew existed.  The postcards belonged to Cynthia Douts Roth and she posted them on the Facebook page.  She also wrote that she had never heard of the place and did some research so she could write about the postcards she was posting.  The garden was built by Ulysses Grant Barr who was also one of the organizers of Lancaster's Media Heights Golf Club.  The garden was located just past the golf club where Mr. Barr resided.  He was employed by the local hardware store of Reiley Bros. & Raub for sixty years.  In 1928 workmen began to blast rock to form the different levels of the flower garden.  It took four years to complete the entire garden.  Flowers and shrubs of all kinds filled the levels of the garden.  Mr. Barr was said to have planted 32,000 evergreens around his home.  In 1933 fountains and lights were added.  Ms. Roth said that her grandfather helped with the planting and fountains.  The heyday of the garden was from 1928 to 1940 when four gardeners were on duty to keep the gardens in shape.  It then became too expensive to continue with the operation of the gardens.  I was born in the mid-1940s, but have no recollection of visiting the gardens during my lifetime.  Never even heard my parents talk about the gardens.  I'm sure they must have been beautiful judging from the post cards that were posted to the Facebook page.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.