Langan Park, also known as Municipal Park, is a municipal park in the Spring Hill neighborhood of

Mobile, Alabama Mobile ( , ) is a city and the county seat of Mobile County, Alabama, United States. The population was 187,041 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. After a successful vote to annex areas west of the city limits in July 2023, Mobil ...

, US. The park opened in 1957 and was named for Joseph N. Langan, a former Mobile mayor, state senator and city commissioner. It has lakes, natural spaces, tennis courts, children’s playgrounds and picnic areas. It is also the site of the Azalea City Golf Course, the Mobile Botanical Gardens, the

Mobile Museum of Art The Mobile Museum of Art (MMofA) is an art museum located in Mobile, Alabama. It features extensive art collections from the United States, Europe, and non-western art. The museum hosts exhibitions, multi-disciplinary programs (including film, ...

and Playhouse in the Park.

Activities

The Azalea City Golf Course is an 18-hole public golf course owned and operated by the city. It opened in 1957 and has hosted

Professional Golfers Association Professional Golfers Association may refer to: * Professional Golfers' Association (Great Britain and Ireland) * Professional Golfers' Association of America The Professional Golfers' Association of America (PGA of America) is an American or ...

events. In 1998, all eighteen greens were redesigned and updated to an average of per green and were planted in Champion Bermuda grass. The Mobile Tennis Center is a public

tennis Tennis is a List of racket sports, racket sport that is played either individually against a single opponent (singles (tennis), singles) or between two teams of two players each (doubles (tennis), doubles). Each player uses a tennis racket st ...

facility with 50

tennis court A tennis court is the venue where the sport of tennis is played. It is a firm rectangular surface with a low net stretched across the centre. The same surface can be used to play both Types of tennis match, doubles and singles matches. A variet ...

s, all lighted and hard-court, with a professional shop and professional instruction on site. The Mobile Botanical Gardens have a variety of flora spread over . The gardens contain a

rhododendron ''Rhododendron'' (; : ''rhododendra'') is a very large genus of about 1,024 species of woody plants in the Ericaceae, heath family (Ericaceae). They can be either evergreen or deciduous. Most species are native to eastern Asia and the Himalayan ...

garden with 1,000 evergreen and native

azalea Azaleas ( ) are flowering shrubs in the genus ''Rhododendron'', particularly the former sections ''Rhododendron sect. Tsutsusi, Tsutsusi'' (evergreen) and ''Pentanthera'' (deciduous). Azaleas bloom in the spring (April and May in the temperate ...

s and the

Longleaf Pine The longleaf pine (''Pinus palustris'') is a pine species native to the Southeastern United States, found along the coastal plain from East Texas to southern Virginia, extending into northern and central Florida. In this area it is also known as ...

Habitat. The Mobile Museum of Art has European, non-Western, American and decorative arts collections. Playhouse in the Park began in 1961 and concentrates on training young people in

theatre arts Theatre or theater is a collaborative form of performing art that uses live performers, usually actors to present experiences of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place, often a stage. The performers may communic ...

. The program includes four large productions a year and consists of a training program for

drama Drama is the specific Mode (literature), mode of fiction Mimesis, represented in performance: a Play (theatre), play, opera, mime, ballet, etc., performed in a theatre, or on Radio drama, radio or television.Elam (1980, 98). Considered as a g ...

dance Dance is an The arts, art form, consisting of sequences of body movements with aesthetic and often Symbol, symbolic value, either improvised or purposefully selected. Dance can be categorized and described by its choreography, by its repertoir ...

vocal The human voice consists of sound made by a human being using the vocal tract, including talking, singing, laughing, crying, screaming, shouting, humming or yelling. The human voice frequency is specifically a part of human sound producti ...

piano A piano is a keyboard instrument that produces sound when its keys are depressed, activating an Action (music), action mechanism where hammers strike String (music), strings. Modern pianos have a row of 88 black and white keys, tuned to a c ...

and scenic art classes. It also includes a traveling professional drama troupe and a full-scale

puppet A puppet is an object, often resembling a human, animal or Legendary creature, mythical figure, that is animated or manipulated by a person called a puppeteer. Puppetry is an ancient form of theatre which dates back to the 5th century BC in anci ...

theatre.

Invasive species

The main lake in the park has become home to several

invasive species An invasive species is an introduced species that harms its new environment. Invasive species adversely affect habitats and bioregions, causing ecological, environmental, and/or economic damage. The term can also be used for native spec ...

, including the channeled applesnail and

tilapia Tilapia ( ) is the common name for nearly a hundred species of cichlid fish from the coelotilapine, coptodonine, heterotilapine, oreochromine, pelmatolapiine, and tilapiine tribes (formerly all were "Tilapiini"), with the economically mos ...

. Both are known to be very destructive to the native aquatic vegetation. Biologists speculate that the snails were most probably dumped into the lake from home aquaria. In 2009, applesnails were found downstream from the lake in Three Mile Creek, posing an immediate threat to the entire Mobile-Tensaw River Delta.D. Shelton, pers. comm. In: United States Geological Survey. 2008. ''Pomacea canaliculata''.

USGS The United States Geological Survey (USGS), founded as the Geological Survey, is an government agency, agency of the United States Department of the Interior, U.S. Department of the Interior whose work spans the disciplines of biology, geograp ...

br>Nonindigenous Aquatic Species Database
Gainesville, FL. Revision date: 4 February 2008

References

External links

City of Mobile
{{Mobile, Alabama Parks in Mobile, Alabama