Green machine

Frank Lloyd Wright—never one to gush—described it as “one of the finest civic urban features of the world.” But he wasn’t talking about Chicago’s storied skyline. He was referring to the city’s park system, which he called “a recreation ground beyond compare.”

The city’s official motto is Urbs in Horto (“city in a garden”), so its 7,556 acres of park land are no accident. The green movement dates back to 1869, when three separate parks commissions began acquiring land throughout the city to create parks and boulevards. In 1864, the city purchased what would become Lincoln Park, when much of it was cemetery ground. Early plans for the park took their cues from formal 18th-century French landscaping, but landscape planner Ossian Simonds redesigned it in the more naturalistic Prairie style. By the 1880s, the Park Commission began expanding the area; eventually, nearly all of Lincoln Park’s 1,212 acres were claimed by the organization. Then the city began working on the expanse east of Michigan Avenue, which had been deeded “forever to remain free of buildings.” The city slowly filled it in with debris from the 1871 Fire, and eventually it became Grant Park.

The south parks got equally careful consideration, thanks in part to Frederick Law Olmsted. His firm designed Jackson Park in 1871 (although much of this original plan remains unexecuted) and redesigned it again in 1893 for the World’s Fair. It wasn’t until after 1895 that the features of Olmsted’s “romantic” style—employing lagoons, woodlands, meadows and islands—materialized. But as cars became more popular, they encroached on the park’s idyllic character; urban historian Carl Condit wrote that “the subsequent treatment of the park is one of the most revolting examples of the destructive rage that has become an inherent characteristic of the American economic system.” The construction of Washington Park, also an Olmsted design from 1871, began in the 1880s, and today much of Olmsted’s vision remains intact, although activists are worried about how the 2016 Olympics (which anticipates the major stadium in that park) may affect it.

William LeBaron Jenney laid out the west parks (including the expansive Garfield, Humboldt and Douglas Parks) in 1871, but like Jackson, they remained mostly unrealized until the 1890s, when Jens Jensen became chief superintendent. His lasting contribution was a belief in a Prairie style of naturalized landscape design and use of native materials. Humboldt Park contains several of Jensen’s signature elements: a meandering river, extensive use of stratified stonework, and native grasses and trees. Alas, the time-honored Chicago tradition of systemic graft and corruption—and Jensen’s refusal to participate in it—led to his dismissal in 1900.

By that time, that same tradition had eaten away at the park system, resulting in a serious overall decline. In hopes of returning the parks to their former glory, the Illinois legislature created the Special Parks Commission as a watchdog group. Jensen triumphantly returned in 1905, at which time he oversaw creation of the Garfield Park Conservatory and revamped many parks in the Prairie style. Meanwhile, progressive ideas about fitness and health motivated more recreational programming throughout all the parks, which led to the construction of buildings like the Humboldt Park Boathouse and the South Shore Cultural Center (see “Gimme shelter,” page 18). Daniel Burnham’s firm handled many of the buildings on the South Side, while Dwight Perkins’s Prairie designs appear in many North Side parks (Lincoln Park’s Café Brauer is the most lavish example). The West Side has the gorgeous gold-domed Garfield Park field house, which is often overshadowed by the Conservatory. Built in 1928 as the West Parks Commission headquarters, it’s one of several park buildings from the Chicago firm of Michaelsen & Rognstad.

But what about the east? Indeed, the lakefront is integral to the parks system, and the mission to keep it “forever open, clear and free” had grassroots support for decades before retail mogul A. Montgomery Ward made it his personal mission in 1890. Development of an unbroken series of lakefront parks and harbors along a scenic roadway was the most immediate result of the Burnham-authored 1909 Plan of Chicago, and today, Lake Shore Drive and the adjacent parks are the most distinctive feature of our urban landscape. After the city’s separate parks commissions defaulted on their financial obligations during the Depression, they consolidated into the present-day Chicago Park District in 1934. Federal relief for the combined entity came in the form of WPA funds in the mid-’30s to -’40s, making possible the increase of recreational and cultural-related programming in park facilities, and installation of many murals and sculptures in parks buildings.

City parks suffered from yet another cycle of poor stewardship during the 1960s and ’70s, when the system became a “cesspool of corruption,” according to former Friends of the Parks chairman Charles Schwartz. Thankfully, activist groups initiated positive changes, and by the late 1980s, CPD entered a period of aggressive rebuilding. Thankfully spared the wrecking ball, the South Shore Cultural Center has slowly been rehabbed and revived, and the city even moved Lake Shore Drive to create the Museum Campus in 1998. The city’s efforts reached a spectacular crescendo with the completion of Millennium Park in 2004. Today, even activists think the park system is working: “The CPD board is a more diversified body, not just a political phalanx,” Schwartz says.

But given Chicago’s tumultuous history, he notes that people will have to keep their eyes on every step the city takes. “There is still great potential for political relationships to take over, so it’s up to groups like ours to be constantly vigilant,” he says.