Grant Park: The Evolution of Chicago's Front Yard
Autor Dennis H Creminen Limba Engleză Paperback – aug 2023
On November 4, 2008, when president-elect Barack Obama celebrated his victory with more than one hundred thousand supporters in Chicago, everyone knew where to meet. Long considered the showplace and cultural center of Chicago, Grant Park has been the site of tragedy and tension, as well as success and joy. In addition to serving as the staging grounds for Abraham Lincoln’s funeral procession through the city, the park has been the setting for civil rights protests and the 1968 Democratic National Convention demonstrations. The faithful attended the open-air mass of Pope John Paul II in Grant Park, and fans gathered there to cheer for the Chicago Bulls after their championship wins. The long park overlooking the beautiful waters of Lake Michigan has played an active part in Chicago and U. S. history.
In 1836, only three years after Chicago was founded, Chicagoans set aside the first narrow shoreline as public ground and declared it “forever open, clear, and free. . . .” Chicago historian and author Dennis H. Cremin reveals that despite such intent, the transformation of Grant Park to the spectacular park it is more than 175 years later was a gradual process, at first fraught with a lack of funding and organization, and later challenged by erosion, the railroads, automobiles, and a continued battle between original intent and conceptions of progress. Throughout the book, Cremin shows that while Grant Park’s landscape and uses have changed throughout its rocky history, the public ground continues to serve “as a display case for the city and a calling card to visitors.” Amply illustrated with maps and images from throughout Chicago’s history, Grant Park shows readers how Chicago’s “front yard” developed into one of the finest urban parks in the country today.
2014 Illinois State Historical Society Book of the Year
2014 Illinois State Historical Society Book of the Year
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Specificații
ISBN-13: 9780809339105
ISBN-10: 0809339102
Pagini: 258
Ilustrații: 50
Dimensiuni: 156 x 235 x 20 mm
Greutate: 0.45 kg
Editura: Southern Illinois University Press
Colecția Southern Illinois University Press
ISBN-10: 0809339102
Pagini: 258
Ilustrații: 50
Dimensiuni: 156 x 235 x 20 mm
Greutate: 0.45 kg
Editura: Southern Illinois University Press
Colecția Southern Illinois University Press
Notă biografică
Dennis H. Cremin is the coauthor of Chicago: A Pictorial Celebration and contributor to The Encyclopedia of Chicago. He has extensive experience as a public historian, serving as director of research and public programs for the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s Gaylord Building Historic Site and as a State Scholar for the Illinois Humanities Council. He served on the Road Scholars Speakers Bureau, provided guided tours for the City of Chicago’s Office of Cultural Affairs, and worked as an archivist for the Grant Park Music Festival. He is an associate professor of history at Lewis University in Romeoville, Illinois.
Extras
Preface
Chicagoans have visited their lakefront park from its earliest days, looking out at the great blue expanse of Lake Michigan and turning to gape at the sprawling settlement on the lakeshore. More than just a place for recreation, Grant Park, as it came to be called, proclaimed the city’s greatness. This book examines how the park’s landscape changed over time and how Chicagoans transformed it into Chicago’s high cultural center.
Chicagoans first set aside a narrow, nearly mile long section of shoreline east of Michigan Avenue in 1836 for a public park and over a century created an expansive landscape. Some of the park is fashioned from rubble from the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, but systematically filling in the lake provided the vast majority of land. In fact, the expansion of Grant Park into the lake provided a template for filling in the rest of the much-vaunted lakefront.
Chicagoans rave to visitors about their lakefront and how it was saved for the people. What the natives often don’t realize is that the lakeshore has been filled in and landscaped. In the nineteenth century, most of the lakefront was sold, some of it given over to use by railroads. It was with the filling in of the lakeshore and the vision of the Plan of Chicago (1909) that the new lakefront emerged. As it has done many times over its history, Chicago re-created itself and fashioned its spectacular lakefront. While many people quickly call to mind the audacity of reversing the Chicago River, they are less likely to point to the transformation of almost the entire lakefront as a park. Grant Park is revealed as one of the most engineered parks in the world.
Being next to the business and governmental center of Chicago’s Loop, Grant Park has garnered a great deal of attention. Given Chicago’s role as the burgeoning metropolis of the Midwest, the city had the financial resources to reenvision its park many times. Some parts of the park were altered for temporary events, while others became the location for permanent structures. Edward Bennett, architect and coauthor of the Plan of Chicago (1909), provided the design for the park with his Revised Plan of Grant Park (1925), and by the end of the Century of Progress Exposition (1933–34), the park took on its definitive form. The northern section features the Art Institute of Chicago, the Buckingham Fountain and the Congress Street entrance dominate the middle, and the Field Museum anchors the southern section. Roadways, footpaths, bridges, and water and electrical systems tie together the entire park’s large lawns and formal, linear gardens. Recent additions, although spectacular, including the Museum Campus on the south and Millennium Park on the north, did little to transform the overall plan of the sizable park.
The study of urban parks can be traced to the history of cemeteries and battlefields. This book has been informed by historic preservationists who first took historic homes as their point of departure but eventually expanded their scope to landscapes, business districts, and regions. This book reflects this approach as well as trends in urban history. In this context, Grant Park reveals a great deal about Chicago, its planners, business leaders, and inhabitants. In many ways, Grant Park served and serves as a display case for the city and a calling card to visitors. It exposes a great deal about how some Chicagoans wish to be perceived by the outside world.
This book focuses on built features of the park. Although landscape designs that were not executed sometimes are examined, this is not a comprehensive planning history of the park. Rather, it examines how the landscape actually changed and how the park was used. As a result, it pro-vides a comprehensive narrative history of the park, a survey spanning 175 years, focusing on significant events and developments. For people paging through the book, the transformation in the landscape and the variety of uses should be readily apparent. More elusive is what these changes mean in the context of the city’s history.
By “reading” the physical landscape of the park and its monuments, it is possible to gain insight into the cultural history and values of the Chicago community. For example, in the 1890s, patriotic citizens erected a monument to General John A. Logan, one of Illinois’ leading volunteers during the Civil War and member of the Grand Army of the Republic, the leading post–Civil War veterans’ organization. Around 1900, Chicagoans rededicated Lake Park in honor of Ulysses S. Grant, Civil War general and president. The statue of Abraham Lincoln was cast in 1908, although it was not unveiled in the park until 1926. Taken in concert, Grant Park commemorates the American Civil War at a time when many of the combatants were passing away and the nation faced new challenges. A cultural reading of the landscape reveals a theme of the centrality of community sacrifice that is embedded in the park’s meaning in the past and is still a component of the park’s symbolism.
This book also surveys how Chicagoans changed this public land from an often unsightly neighborhood park into a landscape of regional, national, and international significance. The transformation of the park was by no means direct, and the current appearance is the result of a great number of plans, efforts, court battles, and compromises. In the wake of the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893, civic leaders advocated for a permanent “White City,” the popular name for the exposition. They envisioned a place that could evoke the glory of the fair and would over several decades provide a place for high culture within the city.
Although a part of the city center, the park has offered an alternative to the built-up urban environment. While the city has been crowded and full of commerce and industry, the park has furnished open space and a home for nonprofit organizations. Although the lines between commercial and nonprofit uses of the park have often been blurred, the park has remained largely an open area reserved for recreation and edification through the arts.
Over its history, the park has provided the staging area for a variety of events, including the entry of Lincoln’s funeral train into the city in 1865, political rallies, and music festivals. It is world renowned for cultural in-stitutions, among them the Art Institute of Chicago, Field Museum, and Grant Park Music Festival. A site for major celebrations, the park hosted Pope John Paul II’s open-air Mass, supplied a place for the Chicago Bulls to celebrate their championships, and provided the site for President-elect Barack Obama’s victory speech. It has also seen its share of protest, such as the demonstrations related to the 1968 Democratic National Convention with the chant, “The whole world is watching.” Taken as a whole, Grant Park’s history is intimately intertwined with that of the city. It is Chicago’s front yard.
Chicagoans have visited their lakefront park from its earliest days, looking out at the great blue expanse of Lake Michigan and turning to gape at the sprawling settlement on the lakeshore. More than just a place for recreation, Grant Park, as it came to be called, proclaimed the city’s greatness. This book examines how the park’s landscape changed over time and how Chicagoans transformed it into Chicago’s high cultural center.
Chicagoans first set aside a narrow, nearly mile long section of shoreline east of Michigan Avenue in 1836 for a public park and over a century created an expansive landscape. Some of the park is fashioned from rubble from the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, but systematically filling in the lake provided the vast majority of land. In fact, the expansion of Grant Park into the lake provided a template for filling in the rest of the much-vaunted lakefront.
Chicagoans rave to visitors about their lakefront and how it was saved for the people. What the natives often don’t realize is that the lakeshore has been filled in and landscaped. In the nineteenth century, most of the lakefront was sold, some of it given over to use by railroads. It was with the filling in of the lakeshore and the vision of the Plan of Chicago (1909) that the new lakefront emerged. As it has done many times over its history, Chicago re-created itself and fashioned its spectacular lakefront. While many people quickly call to mind the audacity of reversing the Chicago River, they are less likely to point to the transformation of almost the entire lakefront as a park. Grant Park is revealed as one of the most engineered parks in the world.
Being next to the business and governmental center of Chicago’s Loop, Grant Park has garnered a great deal of attention. Given Chicago’s role as the burgeoning metropolis of the Midwest, the city had the financial resources to reenvision its park many times. Some parts of the park were altered for temporary events, while others became the location for permanent structures. Edward Bennett, architect and coauthor of the Plan of Chicago (1909), provided the design for the park with his Revised Plan of Grant Park (1925), and by the end of the Century of Progress Exposition (1933–34), the park took on its definitive form. The northern section features the Art Institute of Chicago, the Buckingham Fountain and the Congress Street entrance dominate the middle, and the Field Museum anchors the southern section. Roadways, footpaths, bridges, and water and electrical systems tie together the entire park’s large lawns and formal, linear gardens. Recent additions, although spectacular, including the Museum Campus on the south and Millennium Park on the north, did little to transform the overall plan of the sizable park.
The study of urban parks can be traced to the history of cemeteries and battlefields. This book has been informed by historic preservationists who first took historic homes as their point of departure but eventually expanded their scope to landscapes, business districts, and regions. This book reflects this approach as well as trends in urban history. In this context, Grant Park reveals a great deal about Chicago, its planners, business leaders, and inhabitants. In many ways, Grant Park served and serves as a display case for the city and a calling card to visitors. It exposes a great deal about how some Chicagoans wish to be perceived by the outside world.
This book focuses on built features of the park. Although landscape designs that were not executed sometimes are examined, this is not a comprehensive planning history of the park. Rather, it examines how the landscape actually changed and how the park was used. As a result, it pro-vides a comprehensive narrative history of the park, a survey spanning 175 years, focusing on significant events and developments. For people paging through the book, the transformation in the landscape and the variety of uses should be readily apparent. More elusive is what these changes mean in the context of the city’s history.
By “reading” the physical landscape of the park and its monuments, it is possible to gain insight into the cultural history and values of the Chicago community. For example, in the 1890s, patriotic citizens erected a monument to General John A. Logan, one of Illinois’ leading volunteers during the Civil War and member of the Grand Army of the Republic, the leading post–Civil War veterans’ organization. Around 1900, Chicagoans rededicated Lake Park in honor of Ulysses S. Grant, Civil War general and president. The statue of Abraham Lincoln was cast in 1908, although it was not unveiled in the park until 1926. Taken in concert, Grant Park commemorates the American Civil War at a time when many of the combatants were passing away and the nation faced new challenges. A cultural reading of the landscape reveals a theme of the centrality of community sacrifice that is embedded in the park’s meaning in the past and is still a component of the park’s symbolism.
This book also surveys how Chicagoans changed this public land from an often unsightly neighborhood park into a landscape of regional, national, and international significance. The transformation of the park was by no means direct, and the current appearance is the result of a great number of plans, efforts, court battles, and compromises. In the wake of the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893, civic leaders advocated for a permanent “White City,” the popular name for the exposition. They envisioned a place that could evoke the glory of the fair and would over several decades provide a place for high culture within the city.
Although a part of the city center, the park has offered an alternative to the built-up urban environment. While the city has been crowded and full of commerce and industry, the park has furnished open space and a home for nonprofit organizations. Although the lines between commercial and nonprofit uses of the park have often been blurred, the park has remained largely an open area reserved for recreation and edification through the arts.
Over its history, the park has provided the staging area for a variety of events, including the entry of Lincoln’s funeral train into the city in 1865, political rallies, and music festivals. It is world renowned for cultural in-stitutions, among them the Art Institute of Chicago, Field Museum, and Grant Park Music Festival. A site for major celebrations, the park hosted Pope John Paul II’s open-air Mass, supplied a place for the Chicago Bulls to celebrate their championships, and provided the site for President-elect Barack Obama’s victory speech. It has also seen its share of protest, such as the demonstrations related to the 1968 Democratic National Convention with the chant, “The whole world is watching.” Taken as a whole, Grant Park’s history is intimately intertwined with that of the city. It is Chicago’s front yard.
Cuprins
List of Illustrations
Preface
Acknowledgments
1. Early Park History: Lake, Land, and Place 1
2. Lake Park: A Cultural and Civic Center
3. The World’s Columbian Exposition and Chicago’s Cultural Flowering
4. Making the White City Permanent
5. The New Design
6. Gateway and Cultural Center: From a Century of Progress to Postwar Park
7. Parking Lots, Protests, and Mayhem: Grant Park in the Daley Era
8. The Park Reenvisioned and Renewed
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Preface
Acknowledgments
1. Early Park History: Lake, Land, and Place 1
2. Lake Park: A Cultural and Civic Center
3. The World’s Columbian Exposition and Chicago’s Cultural Flowering
4. Making the White City Permanent
5. The New Design
6. Gateway and Cultural Center: From a Century of Progress to Postwar Park
7. Parking Lots, Protests, and Mayhem: Grant Park in the Daley Era
8. The Park Reenvisioned and Renewed
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Recenzii
“Grant Park is Chicago’s storied front yard. If there is one place to see the rich panoply of Chicago history unfold, I can think of no better spot than Chicago’s lakefront park. Dennis H. Cremin has crafted a rich chronicle of Grant Park that highlights its central place in the history of Chicago. Chapter by chapter, Cremin takes his reader from the park’s origins in the shadow of Fort Dearborn to the creation of Millennium Park.”—Ann Durkin Keating, author of Chicagoland: City and Suburbs of the Railroad Age
“Cremin provides the first thorough account of the often controversial development of Grant Park, including its many physical and cultural features, the numerous important events staged in the park, and the people involved in its evolution.”—Irving Cutler, author ofChicago: Metropolis of the Mid-Continent
“What happens when a historian visits a park and then starts the thought process rolling? What happened here? How has the landscape changed over time? How does the city appear in this showcase parcel of land? Does the real city differ from its ‘front yard’ presentation? Cremin’s answers to such questions, in text and pictures, will provide an enriched vista the next time one walks through Grant Park.”—Gerald A. Danzer, author of Illinois: A History in Pictures
“Cremin provides the first thorough account of the often controversial development of Grant Park, including its many physical and cultural features, the numerous important events staged in the park, and the people involved in its evolution.”—Irving Cutler, author ofChicago: Metropolis of the Mid-Continent
“What happens when a historian visits a park and then starts the thought process rolling? What happened here? How has the landscape changed over time? How does the city appear in this showcase parcel of land? Does the real city differ from its ‘front yard’ presentation? Cremin’s answers to such questions, in text and pictures, will provide an enriched vista the next time one walks through Grant Park.”—Gerald A. Danzer, author of Illinois: A History in Pictures
Descriere
Not long after the city of Chicago was founded in the 1830s, land was set aside for a public park on the lakefront. This book focuses on how people changed this public land from an often unsightly neighborhood park into a landscape of regional, national, and international significance. The transformation of the park did not take place quickly or easily, and the current appearance has been the result of a great number of plans, efforts, court battles, and compromises. By “reading” the physical landscape of the park and its monuments, it is possible to gain insight into the cultural history and values of the Chicago community.