Grant Park: The Evolution of Chicago's Front Yard

5. The New Design

91 5 The New Design Between the end of the nineteenth century and 1909, the South Park Commission made extensive plans for Grant Park. In addition, Daniel H. Burnham and Edward H. Bennett published their 1909 Plan of Chicago, which envisioned Grant Park as a primary focus of the city and provided an ambitious vision for the entire lakefront. Meanwhile, Aaron Montgomery Ward’s sustained and successful opposition to the park’s development and litigation dashed aspects of these visionary plans. With the Illinois Supreme Court’s decision in 1911 in SouthParkCommissionersv.MontgomeryWardandCo., the South Park Commission clearly would need to discern a new course of action. Between 1914 and 1930, the South Park Commission moved forward with modified plans for Grant Park. The court had made it clear that the Field Museum could not be built in the middle of the park as proposed. The South Park Commission confronted the challenges of creating and landscaping the new land on the lakefront and mitigating the impact of the railroad tracks on the park’s landscape. The commissioners would also struggle in this The New Design 92 period to accommodate the automobile, which required new roadways and parking areas. After Burnham’s death in 1912, Bennett (1874–1954) and his architectural firm would go on to exert the greatest influence on the design and appearance of Grant Park during the early part of the twentieth century. The Olmsted Brothers’ Plan The South Park District Commissioners had hired the Olmsted brothers’ firm in 1903 to create a comprehensive design for the vast park. It was a unique park because of its centrality and would require a unique design. New York’s Central Park was built far from the business center as was the land set aside for Los Angeles’s Griffith Park. While other cities, such as Boston, had commons or smaller parks near the city center, its scale and formal design made Grant Park singular. From 1903 through 1908, the brothers revised their plans and made large cultural institutions the primary foci of the park. To gather public support, the commissioners displayed the design model in the Art Institute. The Olmsted brothers’ plan divided the park into three large segments. After almost a century of flux, this segmentation would dictate the division of the park moving forward. The center of the park ran from Jackson Street to Hubbard Place (later renamed Balbo). This section featured a grand approach at Michigan Avenue that emphasized the magnificent façade of the proposed Field Museum. The northern segment extended from Randolph Street to Jackson Boulevard and featured the Art Institute, along Michigan Avenue. This section was to include the North Meadow on the east and featured tree-lined promenades. The architects balanced their design with a South Meadow, which mirrored that of the north, and incorporated the Crerar Library on the south. In a slight variation from the 1909 plan, yacht clubs were to be placed on the southern extent of the park in line with Park Place (Eleventh Street) and a yacht harbor south of the park.1 The Olmsteds’ design placed the Field Columbian Museum east of the Illinois Central Railroad’s right-of-way. The Olmsted design addressed many of the site’s limitations. First, the railroad from above Van Buren Street to below Harrison Street would be deemphasized by lowering the railroad tracks and creating a tunnel that would be covered with landscaping. Although some of the details, such as a playing field, gymnasium, and swimming basin, changed over time, on the whole, the Olmsted brothers kept to their tripartite division of the park, which provided the point of departure for future designs.2 In addition to the formal plans for Grant Park, the South Park Commission wished to move forward with its boulevard system to connect Grant Park to Jackson Park and to connect the South Park system with grand The New Design 93 boulevards to the Lincoln and West Park Districts. In the 1890s, Burnham had conceptualized a plan to connect Lake Park with Jackson Park, and the idea stuck with the commissioners. In 1908, with the process of reclaiming the submerged lands for Grant Park almost completed, the district moved ahead with an extensive plan to join Grant and Jackson Parks, including planning for the newly created land extending a thousand or more feet out into Lake Michigan for the approximately eight miles between Grant...