Grant (Ulysses) Park

SITE

Grant Park totals 312.98 acres and is a public park located in Chicago’s central business district in the Loop Community area. Grant Park’s most notable features include Maggie Daley Park, Buckingham Fountain, the Art Institute of Chicago, and a portion of the Museum Campus that includes the Field Museum and the Shedd Aquarium.

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HISTORY

Grant Park's beginnings date to 1835, when foresighted citizens, fearing commercial lakefront development, lobbied to protect the open space. As a result, the park's original area east of Michigan Avenue was designated "public ground forever to remain vacant of buildings."

Officially named Lake Park in 1847, the site soon suffered from lakefront erosion. The Illinois Central Railroad agreed to build a breakwater to protect the area in exchange for permission for an offshore train trestle. After the Great Fire of 1871, the area between the shore and trestle became a dump site for piles of charred rubble, the first of many landfill additions.

From 1896-1931, the South Park Commissioners acquired land for the park.  In 1901, the City transferred the park to the South Park Commission, which named it for Ulysses S. Grant (1822-1885), 18th President of the United States. Renowned architect Daniel H. Burnham envisioned Grant Park as a formal landscape with museums and civic buildings. However, construction was stalled by lawsuits launched by mail-order magnate Aaron Montgomery Ward, who sought to protect the park's open character.

Finally, in 1911, the Illinois Supreme Court ruled in Ward's favor. New landfill at the park's southern border allowed construction of the Field Museum to begin, and the park evolved slowly. In 1934, the South Park Commission was consolidated into the Chicago Park District, which completed improvements using federal relief funds.

In 1974, the Chicago Park District acquired more property to expand the park.  Property was donated in 2003 and the City transferred land in 2014 for additional expansion of Grant Park.

In the mid-1970s, the Chicago Park District replaced the old park lot with the Richard J. Daley Bicentennial Plaza, a complex that provided a new 3700-car underground garage with major recreational facilities.  Dedicated to Chicago’s former Mayor Richard J. Daley (1902 - 1976), the facility included a new field house for indoor recreational programming as well as several outdoor amenities such as tennis courts, an ice-skating rink, picnic areas, and Grant Park’s first playground.

In 2014, the Chicago Park District began transforming the northeastern part of Grant Park, including the former Richard J. Daley Plaza, into “Maggie Daley Park,” a park within Grant Park.  The Park District hired Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, an internationally renowned landscape architecture firm to design the new park space.  Serving as a counterpoint to the symmetry and formality of Grant Park, the design incorporates curvilinear forms, dramatic topography, and many whimsical elements.

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