Park hours: 5:00am-midnight

This park is named after Captain John Heard Couch, who first sailed for Portland from Newburyport, Massachusetts in 1839. His first home in Portland was near where Union Station is today, but he owned all the land from the river to approximately NW 23 Avenue and from Burnside north for a mile. Captain Couch developed this land and named the blocks alphabetically (A Street, B Street, and so forth). During the last half of the 1800s, Couch's land was known as the Alphabet District. The captain was a well-liked, civic-minded man, so it's only appropriate that one of Portland's beautiful parks be named in his honor.

The site of today's Couch Park was once the estate of 19th century merchant prince Cicero Hunt Lewis, who married Captain Couch's daughter Clementine. The estate consisted of an elegant mansion, stables, and a greenhouse, all of which were built in 1881. The Lewises raised eleven children on these grounds.

After the Lewis house was demolished, the Portland School
District acquired the property in 1913 and built a new Couch
School to replace the first one built in 1882 located at NW 17 & Kearney. The block east of the school, now the park, was
used as a playground.

In 1970 the Captain John Brown house (built in 1890 at 2035
NW Everett) was moved onto the northeast corner of the site
to save it from demolition. Private citizens donated money to
restore the building as a center for senior citizens and medical
services. A HUD Historic Preservation Agency grant of
$100,000 was insufficient to complete the restoration and when
the additional funds couldn't be raised, the project was
abandoned. By 1973 the house had been severely vandalized
and was finally demolished.

Couch School became a special school in 1968 and in 1974 its
name changed to the Metropolitan Learning Center (MLC), leaving
only the park with Couch's name.

A master plan process for the park began in 1975 with over twenty community meetings to determine what it would look like. MLC students helped with design ideas and residents of the surrounding neighborhood actually participated in the construction of the park and in the building of its play structure.

In 1976, three pieces of artwork where installed in the park: a steel sculpture by David Cotter, mosaic tiles by Jere Grimm, and carved wooden pillars by William Moore, Eric Jensen, and Brent Jenkins that support the playground shelter.