I've been blessed over the years to have access to one of the finest private research facilities in the world, the Newberry Library, which kindly permits me to be a scholar-in-residence. Using their resources really enhanced the following story — I probably would have never known about Frederick Law Olmsted's report on the future Jackson Park had I not bumped into an original copy waiting for me in the Newberry collection.
When formed in 1869, the Chicago South Park Commission faced seemingly insurmountable obstacles. First, it had no money — its authority to raise taxes ended up in front of the Illinois Supreme Court. Second, it had no land: The property it wanted was in the hands of people who demanded "exorbitant prices" or passionately refused to sell. Third, its legal right to exist was questioned.
Or, as the Chicago Times wrote, reporting on the commission's first annual meeting in 1870: "Many persons owning property within the park and others on general principles and for various reasons manifested strong opposition to every measure tending to produce this result and proclaimed that, as advised by 'counsel learned in the law,' the South Park Act was
unconstitutional and void."
But a bond of $1,642,000 was floated, with $918.87 for office furniture and $1,500 to Olmsted, Vaux & Co. to assess the suitability of the area around Drexel and Kankakee avenues as a future park for a city whose population had nearly tripled in the previous decade.
"Your territory lies at the distance of six miles from the center of business of Chicago and quite beyond its corporate limits," he wrote — indeed, Hyde Park would not join Chicago until 1889. "Its neighborhood is mostly uncultivated country, much of it unenclosed and sparsely inhabited."
The city could double and double again, Olmsted wrote, and yet the park "will not be much used by the citizens of Chicago."
Here he was mistaken. While Jackson Park would never become the central civic feature that downtown's Grant Park would be, it would serve the recreational needs of the city's vibrant South Side, include including two popular beaches, and bask in international attention as host of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition. It would leave , leaving a legacy of one cultural landmark, the Griffin Museum of Science and Industry, and another frequently overlooked gem, La Rabida Hospital — , and leading eventually, despite furious efforts to thwart it, to the Obama Presidential Center.
Olmsted's task, and his obstacles
Back in 1871, though, Olmsted bemoaned the land he was given to work with.
"The first obvious defect of the site is that of its flatness," he wrote. What is needed is "a mountain glen with a dashing stream and cascades."
That being impossible, Olmsted's view fell upon an undeniable "highly picturesque" feature already right there: Lake Michigan.
"There is but one object of scenery near Chicago of special grandeur or sublimity and that, the Lake, can be made, by artificial means, no more grand or sublime."
Olmsted envisioned a series of lagoons connected by a mile-long canal, the Midway Plaisance — an old French word for "pleasantness" — the assumption being that most Chicagoans making the journey would go by boat. The first L tracks wouldn't be laid until 1892.
Fate had other ideas, namely the Great Chicago Fire of October 1871 that destroyed the South Side Park Commission office — along with most of Olmsted's plans.
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