Eakins Oval

Eakins Oval
Washington Monument at Eakins Oval
Location
Fairmount Park, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Coordinates	39°57′49″N 75°10′43″W / 39.96361°N 75.17861°W / 39.96361; -75.17861
Roads at junction	Benjamin Franklin Parkway Spring Garden Street Kelly Drive Martin Luther King Jr. Drive 24th Street
Construction
Lanes	3-5
Maintained by	City of Philadelphia

Eakins Oval is a traffic circle in Philadelphia. It forms the northwest end of the Benjamin Franklin Parkway just in front of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, with a central array of fountains and monuments, and a network of pedestrian walkways.

This loop of road usually carries a large volume of traffic, as it connects the core of the city with Fairmount Park, Kelly Drive (formerly East River Drive), and Martin Luther King, Jr. Drive (formerly West River Drive). During parades and other major municipal events such as the Thanksgiving Day Parade, and large concerts such as Live 8 Philadelphia and the Budweiser Made in America Festival, the roadways are shut down to automobile traffic and the oval becomes center stage for the gathering. Eakins Oval was the site of the stage for the 2017 NFL Draft.

The oval was part of urban planner Jacques Gréber's design for the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, which he proposed in 1917.^[1]

The oval is named for Thomas Eakins, a Philadelphian, world-famous realist painter, and fine arts educator.

The southeastern part of the oval serves as a parking lot; it was originally part of the Parkway until traffic modifications isolated it in the 1960s.