In the early days of Oklahoma City this site was part of the railyards, but the Civic Center improvements of the 1930s cleared the way for new buildings and created the curved Couch Drive that gives the park its distinctive shape. In 1947 the Centre Theatre was built on the site now occupied by the Oklahoma City Museum of Art and ran feature films until the 1970s when it closed.

Today this small urban greenspace bears the name of Carolyn Hill who led the Oklahoma City Museum of Art from 1994-2008. Hill was a native Oklahoman who had a successful 30-year career in the New York City art world before returning home. She found the Oklahoma City art scene divided but under her leadership, a stronger unified community emerged. As Downtown experienced a renaissance inspired by the MAPS Projects of the 1990s, Hill worked tirelessly to promote a Downtown presence for an art museum and raised funding to transform the old Centre Theatre into the Reynolds Visual Arts Center – a modern art museum for a modern city. In honor of her efforts, this park was designated Carolyn Hill Park by the city council in 2012.