All photos taken in Millennium Park, downtown Chicago
No, this is not a law firm. It is a historic dream team, or green team, that made Chicago’s waterfront the spectacular place that it is today. An architect, mayor and businessman, these three all had vision and they were all doers. The result of their combined efforts, along with those of many other key players (like Olmsted) is spectacular:
· All but four miles of Chicago’s 28-mile lakefront is park land.
· There are 33 public beaches on Chicago’s waterfront
· An 18-mile lakefront bike/pedestrian trail runs along the city’s waterfront
· Millennium Park, built on a lid over the Illinois Central railroad connects the downtown to Lake Michigan with a fascinating mosaic of public art works, native plant gardens a performing art center and a network of creatively designed bridges leading to Lake Michigan parks, beaches and to the Art Institute.
How did these three visionary men help make all of this possible?
Daniel Burnham managed the 1893 World’s Columbian Exhibition in Chicago, one of the greatest events in U.S. history chronicled in the fascinating book Devil in the White City by Eric Larson. Burnham was not only a great architect, but a gifted facilitator and the co-author of the 1909 Burnham plan which had as tenets that “The lakefront by right belongs to the people” and everyone should be in walking distance to a park. His values can be traced to his parents who raised him to be of service to others.
Richard Daley served as Mayor of Chicago for 22 years, and led the effort to “make Chicago the greenest city in the U.S.” As he said: “…when you do such things as planting trees and creating open space, when you invest resources to remove pollution from the air and encourage the construction of buildings that are smart for the environment, then you enhance quality of life for all the residents of the city.” To support his rhetoric, Daley took bold action. He closed down a small private airport and converted it to a native prairie and he led the public/private partnership that resulted in Millennium Park, the crown jewel of the Chicago waterfront park system. Daley also had 600,000 trees planted, 85 miles of landscaped medians installed and 600 roof gardens built, including a 20,000 square foot garden atop City Hall. The city is much greener because of him.
Aaron Montgomery Ward founded the nation’s first mail order catalog in 1872, which led to the creation of Montgomery Ward department stores. Not simply content with counting his money, or fighting off taxation and regulations, Ward cared (the operative word) for others and the welfare of his city. He wanted poor people to have access to Chicago’s waterfront. In his words, the Chicago lakefront must be “forever open, clean and free.” Toward this end he sued the city of Chicago twice to force it to remove buildings and structures from the lake front and to prevent it from building new ones. Ward led this fight starting back in the 1930s to transform the City waterfront from a rail yard to a vast network of lakefront parklands. He had the imagination and vision to realize that this was possible.
Burnham, Daley and Ward’s vision is alive and beautiful today. Chicagoans and visitors flock to the lakefront by the millions to access the lake, its beaches, free art exhibits and concerts.
