The Cottage Grove neighborhood saw much development—both commercial and residential—in the 1950s. The area increasingly came to be seen as a middle and upper-middle class neighborhood for black Greensboro denizens.

 

Paralleling the founding and expansion of Cottage Grove was the nearby construction and opening of Morningside Public Housing across Cottage Grove Avenue (now English Street). Opened in 1952 as the first housing built specifically for low-income African Americans in Greensboro, Morningside resembled standard public housing units from that era—block, high-density apartments, with 400 units.

 

In the fall 1964, Dr. William Hampton, the first African American councilman of Greensboro and practicing physician, founded and opened Hampton Elementary on a sixteen-acre lot adjacent to where the buried landfill. With a neighborhood school established, the area further solidified itself as a desirable locale in which to reside.

​

Just to the west of the park is the Willow Oaks development - a relatively new mixed housing and mixed income community built as a HUD Hope VI redevelopment project that replaced Morningside Homes. When Morningside Homes existed the park was home to children playing on the playground and youth playing pickup basketball games. During that time the park was considered to be a neighborhood asset, but with the demise of Morningside and the arrival of the new residents of Willow Oaks, the park has essentially been abandoned and neglected.

 

The demise of a community park is often met with a sense of loss and sadness. Although that was initially the case with Bingham Park, many residents came to view the park as a hazard once they learned that it was built on top of a former landfill. Because the landfill was constructed during an era when regulations were not as stringent as they are today, the landfill was not lined. Lining a landfill prevents toxic chemicals from leaching into the soil and groundwater. The combination of this landfill not being lined and the absence of regulations regarding what types of materials could be disposed of there, resulted in a variety of toxic materials being introduced into the soil and groundwater.