[8] As the area shifted from farmland to residential, over the next decades, the dam was removed, the creek was buried to make it easier to build houses, and the pond dried up.

The Select and Common Councils of the City of Philadelphia do ordain, That the Department of Public Works, Bureau of Surveys, be, and is hereby authorized and directed to place on the public plan for park purposes that certain lot of ground situate between Forty-third and Forty-fourth streets and Baltimore avenue and Chester avenue, to be called Clarence H. Clark Park : Provided, The owners of property first enter into an agreement satisfactory to the City Solicitor, to dedicate the same to the City on the payment of the amount paid by them for street improvement, sixteen thousand nine hundred and twenty-five (16,925) dollars and thirty-five (35) cents.The ordinance was passed on June 8, 1894, and the deal was done.

[15] The Dickens sculpture, by New York City sculptor Francis Edwin Elwell,[17] shows the 19th-century author and one of his characters, Nell Trent of the novel The Old Curiosity Shop.

[21] In June 1916, a large stone from Devil's Den at Gettysburg Battlefield was set up in the park to recall the Union soldiers treated on the site and the "services of the patriotic men and women" who cared for them.

[22] The park seems to have been the venue for a long-running Independence Day fireworks show; in 1937, for example, the "27th annual display of the Kingsessing Safe and Sane Fourth of July Association lasted an hour and 10 minutes".

Yet the 1970s and '80s saw park maintenance steadily decline; no major capital projects were completed except for normal repairs and the installation of playground equipment in the early 1980s.

FOCP raised money to do the repairs, which were overseen by the Fairmount Park Art Association, and requested additional lighting to illuminate the sculpture.

Lacking lights, the park was off-limits after dusk except to drug dealers and their prey," wrote Judith Rodin, the president of the nearby University of Pennsylvania, which was heavily involved in gentrification efforts in the neighborhood.

In 2000, FOCP, the Recreation department, and the non-profit University City District organization agreed to raise private maintenance funds to supplement municipal efforts.

[16] The partners sought and received $55,000[15] from the William Penn Foundation to develop a master plan for Clark Park, which was delivered in 2001 after a nine-month effort by community-based steering committee and landscape architects.

Among its fruits: a comprehensive assessment of the park's 305 trees by the Morris Arboretum; two new playgrounds, one of which was built with private funds; and plans to rebuild the basketball court.

The master plan also calls for a central plaza where chess players now gather around the flagpole, improvements to the Dickens and Gettysburg Stone areas, and sidewalk and lighting renovations.

Since 2008, the vendors have been equipped with wireless Electronic Benefit Transfer devices set up by the U.S. Department of Agriculture that allow customers to pay with credit and debit cards and food stamps.