Projects

Address

331 E. Randolph St. (Columbus Drive)
Chicago,IL60601
United States

Community Area

Central Business District, Loop, & South Loop

Project Description

Grant (Ulysses) Park, proudly referred to as “Chicago’s Front Yard,” is a 313-acre Chicago Park District site bounded on the north by East Randolph Street, on the south by Roosevelt Road, on the east by Lake Michigan (Monroe and DuSable Harbors), and on the west by Michigan Avenue. A few of the park’s most iconic and notable features, today, include the Art Institute of Chicago, Buckingham Fountain, Millennium Park, Maggie Daley Park, and the Museum Campus (which includes the Art Institute of Chicago, the Field Museum of Natural History, the Shedd Aquarium, and the Adler Planetarium). Its beginnings date to 1835, with the original intent of the park being to prevent lakefront development and to protect the open space. The park’s original area east of Michigan Avenue was “forever to remain vacant of buildings”. Officially named Lake Park in 1847, the entire park is built on landfill, much of which consists of the charred rubble of the Great Fire of 1871. The park was renamed Grant Park, in honor of the 18th President of the United States, Ulysses S. Grant, by the South Park Commission (later to become the Chicago Park District) in 1901. Renowned American/Chicago architect and urban designer, Daniel H. Burnham, is credited with the park’s reconceptualization as a formal landscape including museums and other civic buildings, only to be contested by the Chicago based mail-order magnate, Aaron Montgomery Ward, who sought to protect the park’s open character. 

In 2002, the Chicago Park District Board of Commissioners adopted the Grant Park Framework Plan. It outlines recommendations and principles to guide land use and management for Grant Park based on the Grant Park Design Guidelines of 1992. Since the plan’s publication, the Park District has accomplished a number of objectives within the proposed framework. These include the development of Maggie Daley Park, the adjacent Millennium Park, as well as the Skate Park on the southern end. However, twenty years hence, areas of the park such as Upper and Lower Hutchinson Fields and Columbus Drive, warrant reconsideration because the park, its communities, and the City have evolved in the past twenty years. Other areas, such as Butler Field, which was intended as a temporary structure, have aged out of use in their current forms, while others, such as the Lakefront development, have yet to be realized. 

Starting in spring of 2022, the Chicago Park District began the efforts to renew the Grant Park Framework Plan to provide an updated and contemporary vision for future improvements to the park over time. The updated framework plan will serve as a tool for the Park District and the greater community to prioritize improvements as resources to invest in the park become available.  The plan will address Grant Park’s role as a neighborhood park, a city destination, and as public open space with national significance as a historic park. The plan will be the guiding document that outlines priorities and ensures that improvements are implemented in a coordinated manner with respect to the historic integrity of the park and the evolving needs of the community.