CENTRAL GREENERY, PUBLIC SPACE, AND A VIEW
by
FRANCIS H. STRAUS II
Delivered to The Fortnightly of Chicago and The Chicago Literary
Club
March 6, 1998
Chicago controversies are numerous and intriguing, but trying
to fit any one of them into fifteen minutes is difficult. I wish to
focus on the downtown lake front, describing the vision of many and
the self interest of some which have led to the current downtown
shore scene in Chicago.
Lake Michigan is the special geographic feature of Chicago.
The Lake and its proximity through Mud Lake to the Des
Plaines-Illinois-Mississippi water way is the reason people first
formed a settlement here. In 1772 the first nonnative settler,
DuSable, built his trading post on the north side of the Chicago
River. The 1795 Treaty of Greenville with the Indians, after the
battle of Fallen Timbers in Ohio, ceded a six square mile plot of
land at the mouth of the Chicago River to the American Government.
Eight years later in 1803 the government built a small military post,
Fort Dearborn, on the south bank at the mouth of the Chicago River to
discourage British trade with the Indians.
When John Kinzie took over the DuSable trading post he
prospered and the community began to grow. There was serious
settlement disruption during the War of 1812 and the Fort Dearborn
Massacre, but the Fort was rebuilt in 1816, and in 1830 the sandbar
at the mouth of the River was dug out and a 1000 foot pier was built
on the north to prevent further sand from obstructing the River
mouth. The supervising engineer was Jefferson Davis, the future
Confederate President. The settlement now grew faster going from 60
people in 1831 to 150 in 1833. This number allowed Chicago to
incorporate as a village according to state law. The rights of the
remaining Indians were bought out and the community began to boom.
The muddy village's population grew to 3,265 by 1835. Selling real
estate became the fastest way to become wealthy and to be elected
mayor. Ogden, Hubbard, Cleaver, Gurnee and Wentworth were all
settlers from the East who made fortunes in Chicago real estate.
During the 1830's Chicago leaders met at weekly town meetings
at the First Presbyterian Church. On November 2nd, 1835, they passed
an important resolution saying that when Fort Dearborn lands were
sold by the U.S. Government, the town should buy a central 20 acre
square whose eastern margin was shore line to be reserved for all
time as a public square accessible to all people. In 1839 President
Martin Van Buren as a re-election move gave Chicago its "public
square" to be called Dearborn Park, which was the block west of
Michigan Avenue between Washington and Randolph Streets and which
included the marshy land east of Michigan Avenue between Madison and
Randolph to the water's edge. Dearborn Park became Chicago's public
center where parades took place and speakers set up their podiums.
Fairs and rallies were successfully held there and it was only
towards the end of the century that public use began to wane.
At about the same time in 1836 the need for a canal which
would allow freight from Lake Michigan to reach the Illinois River
caused the state to name three Chicagoans: Gurdon Hubbard, William
Thornton and William Archer, as supervisors of the canal project. .
They needed to sell lands which had been conscripted for the canal in
order to generate funds to build it. The three decided among
themselves not to sell any land between Madison Street and 12th
Street from Michigan Avenue east to the Lake shore. This land was
"public ground -- a common to remain forever open, clear, and free of
any buildings or other obstruction whatever". So with the vision of
President Van Buren and these early Chicagoans a narrow marshy strip
of lake shore between Randolph Street and 12th street was dedicated
to non-obstructed park use.
The canal was completed and the City grew in response. By
1850 the population was 30,000. There were increasing problems of
collecting and pumping clean water to prevent typhoid and cholera
epidemics. The naturally stormy Lake Michigan was now eroding the
downtown lake shore south of the river mouth pier. The swampy land
edge became the collection site for decomposing large animal
carcasses. In 1851 the new Illinois Central railway offered to build
a north-south breakwater in the Lake off shore to protect the
shoreline and not so incidentally to give the railroad access to the
City center and Lake shipping. Stephen Douglas one of the railroad's
founders had already sold lake front property south of 22nd street to
the railroad. The Federal Government had refused to build a
protecting breakwater and the City faced great expense in trying to
get clean water, build sewers, and raise the street levels up out of
the mud. Many of the City's wealthiest citizens owned houses along
Michigan Avenue which needed protection from Lake erosion so the
offer by the Illinois Central was accepted. The railroad was given a
300 foot wide strip, 400 feet from Michigan Avenue out in the lake,
from 22nd Street to Randolph Street. The Illinois Central
subsequently bought old Fort Dearborn land north of Randolph from the
Federal Government and filled out into the Lake to make room for a
station and rail yards where the Prudential and Amoco buildings stand
today. Thus the original vision for an unobstructed people-oriented
central city park was blemished.
The City continued to grow, it was 60,000 by 1853, and
200,000 by the time of the Civil War. For more people more park was
needed, but the Illinois Central convinced the Illinois legislature
to give the Chicago downtown lake front to it for eight hundred
thousand dollars. The land was at the time worth at least two and
one half million dollars. The Governor vetoed the bill. The
legislature voted to override the veto, and the railroad started
filling in the shore line. The Chicago City Council objected and the
State legislature then repealed the bill. The Illinois Central took
the issue to court and finally in 1910 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled
that the State legislature's repeal was valid.
So for the second half of the nineteenth century there was
first a narrow marshy park, then a disputed park, and finally a
reinstated but undeveloped park. During this time much of the debris
resulting from the Great Chicago Fire had been dumped out from the
shoreline, canal and harbor mouth dredgings were put there, and the
Illinois Central had added more landfill so the shoreline had moved
further out into the Lake leaving more and more undeveloped land
between Michigan Avenue and the shoreline. Of course it was
difficult to separate landfill from garbage and trash so both were
piled up in the increasing space called "Lake Park".
In 1890 a 44 year old visionary merchandiser named Aaron
Montgomery Ward looked east from his office window at Madison and
Michigan over the trash, the ruins of an old exposition hall, pieces
of decrepit city equipment, sheds, and squatters' shanties, and asked
his attorney to go and do something about it. At the same time
Chicago Mayor DeWitt Cregier and the City Council announced plans to
clear the debris and build a city hall, a post office, a police
station, a power plant and stables for City garbage horses and wagons
in Lake Park.
On October 16th, 1890, Montgomery Ward filed suit to clear
the Lake front of debris, buildings and refuse. The City agreed
thinking that to be the first step for the buildings they had in
mind. Little did they realize that Ward was working for a clean open
park, free of any buildings or any obstruction whatsoever. Lower
courts agreed with Montgomery Ward as did the Illinois Supreme Court
in 1897 with two exceptions: the new Public Library built in 1893 on
Dearborn Park and the Art Institute, begun in 1891 in Lake Park .
Montgomery Ward later regretted not fighting the Art Institute
construction and he certainly would have if he had suspected the
later additions of the Goodman Theater, the Art School and the new
exhibition halls.
After Ward had won his case, the City and the Illinois
National Guard with the Tribune's support announced plans to build
new armories and parade grounds east of the Illinois Central tracks.
These would be exempt from the Court's ruling as that area had been
water and so not part of the original Lake Park. Ward filed suit a
second time, defying the City and the Chicago Tribune who believed
the city needed troops close at hand after the bloody labor strikes
at the Pullman factory and elsewhere. Again the State Supreme Court
upheld Ward's view of the lakefront. The City then gave the property
over to the South Park Commission which set about enlarging it by
using harbor dredgings to create 50 new acres at almost no cost to
tax payers. In 1901 the newly formed enlarged park was renamed Grant
Park after the Illinois Civil War general and president.
Despite these successes there was a third threat to an open
vista for Grant Park. Marshall Field wished to donate a museum for
his naturalist collection and to have it constructed in Grant Park.
The State legislature passed a new act especially permitting cities
and park districts to build museums in public parks and to collect
tax monies to maintain these museums. Ward offered to give up his
insistence on an open Grant Park if the Park District would promise
not to allow any further structures to be built in the Park after
Field's Museum. The Park District refused such a promise since
institutions with possible museums and libraries were lined up with
plans to build in Grant Park. For these reasons Ward filed his
third suit. Marshall Field died leaving six million dollars to build
his museum with the proviso that the City would provide the site
within six years. Montgomery Ward was called undemocratic, and the
enemy of real parks, for his "no obstruction" stand. He was a
somewhat shy and private person and the adverse publicity was very
painful for him. In 1909 the Illinois Supreme Count again saw the
controversy Ward's way saying the Marshall Field Museum could
properly be built in a park, but not in Grant Park where the
designation of "free and open" had been in place for so many years.
Now the Park District sued Ward, yet the outcome in 1911 was the
same. At the last minute before the six year deadline the Illinois
Central railway offered the site just south of Grant Park at 12th
Street for the Field Museum. Subsequently Shedd, a Fields executive,
added the Aquarium, and Adler, a Sears Roebuck executive, added the
Planetarium to make a special science-naturalist museum complex.
During the first decade of this century Daniel Burnham, fresh
from the Colombian Exposition, presented a City Plan which proposed
park land all along the lake shore from the Calumet River on the
south to Waukegan on the North. This vision must have come partly
from sensing the value of Grant Park as it was taking shape. The
plan was enthusiastically accepted and started but the Depression and
the Second World War brought the initial efforts to a halt. One part
of the plan was to lower the Illinois Central tracks to fifteen feet
below park level and to electrify all train movement across Grant
Park thus stopping the steam engine smoke and making the trains less
obvious. The railroad resisted until Charles Merriam, a South side
alderman, organized sufficient pressure to achieve these gains. The
railway also promised to tear down its brick 12th Street station and
build one to match the Field Museum. Sixty years later it did remove
the station, but row houses are the actual replacement structures.
Now we have a green almost open space with lovely views out
over the changing moods of Lake Michigan at our City Center which is
extensively used for fairs, parades, entertainment, and food fests,
but the controversy will continue as to whether our important park
spaces should or should not be used for bigger highways, municipal
buildings, convention halls, athletic stadiums, or airports. As
Chicagoans we do have to ask whether this downtown park could more
appropriately be named Ward Park or Hubbard-Ward Park.