Jackson Park Historic Landscape District and Midway Plaisance | |
 View ofCollegiate Gothic architecture ofThe University of Chicago, taken looking northwest from the grassy, tree-lined Midway. | |
| Location | Chicago, Illinois |
|---|---|
| Built | 1871 |
| Architect | Frederick Law Olmsted,Lorado Taft |
| NRHP reference No. | 72001565[1] |
| Added to NRHP | December 15, 1972 |
TheMidway Plaisance, known locally asthe Midway, is apublic park on theSouth Side ofChicago, Illinois. It is one mile long by 220 yards wide and extends along 59th and 60th streets, joiningWashington Park at its west end andJackson Park at its east end. It divides theHyde Parkcommunity area to the north from theWoodlawn community area to the south. NearLake Michigan, the Midway is about 6 miles (10 km) south of the downtown "Loop". TheUniversity of Chicago had been established just north of the park, and university buildings now front the Midway to the south, as well.
Intended as part of theChicago boulevard system, the park came to prominence when the Midway was laid out to host popularamusements at theWorld's Columbian Exposition in 1893, which hosted the world's first Ferris Wheel, later lending its name, "midway", to areas atcounty andstate fairs and amusement parks withsideshows. The park is also featured as one of the main settings in the bookThe Devil in the White City written by Erik Larson. Landscaped with long vistas andavenues of trees at the start of the 20th century, the Midway in part followed the vision of its designerFrederick Law Olmsted, one of the creators ofNew York City'sCentral Park, but without his proposed feature of aVenetian canal down the Midway's center linking the lagoon systems of Jackson and Washington parks. Instead, the Midway is landscaped with afosse, lawn covered depression, where the canal would have been, although in the winter parts of the grounds are turned over forice skating. The Midway Plaisance has a variety of different elements for visitors to explore, including lakes, trails, bridges, and fields. Today, the park hosts many different programs, including: concerts, ice skating lessons, movie nights, and many other events.
The word "plaisance" is both theFrench spelling of and a quaint obsolete spelling for "pleasance", itself an obscure word in this context meaning "a pleasure ground laid out with shady walks, trees and shrubs, statuary, and ornamental water". In the western area, Olmsted, (the park designer) labeled a section “Upper Plaisance.” In the eastern area, he had a “Lagoon Plaisance.” Connecting the two was a “Midway Plaisance.” In other words, Midway Plaisance wasn’t a name. It was a description.[2]
The Midway Plaisance began as a vision in the 1850s ofPaul Cornell, a land developer, to turn an undeveloped stretch of infertile land south of Chicago into an urban lakeside retreat for middle- and upper-class residents seeking to escape city life. The area was a lakefrontmarshecosystem.
In 1869, Cornell and his South Park Commission were granted the right to set up a complex of parks and boulevards that would include Washington Park to the west, Jackson Park to the east on the lakeshore, and the Midway Plaisance as a system of paths and waterways connecting the two (seeEncyclopedia of Chicago Map). The firm of Olmsted, Vaux, and Co., famous for creating New York City'sCentral Park, was hired to design the urban oasis. Part of their plan was that the Midway would function as "a magnificent chain of lakes", allowing boaters to travel from the ponds in Washington Park through the lagoons in Jackson Park and into Lake Michigan.
The South Park Commission office, where all the detailed plans were stored, was burned in theGreat Chicago Fire of 1871. The expense of rebuilding the city eliminated the funds to cover expenditures that the plans would have entailed, and the South Park area remained largely in its natural swampy state.
TheWorld's Columbian Exposition of 1893 was held in the underdeveloped parts of the South Park. The worldwide celebration ofColumbus' transfer of "the torch of civilization to the New World" in 1492 was one of the most successful and influential ofworld's fairs. It covered over 600 acres (2.4 km2) and attracted exhibitors and visitors from all over the world.
For the Exposition, the mile-long Midway Plaisance, running from the eastern edge of Washington Park onCottage Grove Avenue to the western edge of Jackson Park onStony Island Avenue, was turned over to the theatrical entrepreneurSol Bloom, a protégé of Chicago mayorCarter Harrison III. It became a grand mix of fakes,hokum, and the genuinely educational and introduced the "hootchy-cootchy" version of thebelly dance in the "Street in Cairo" amusement; it was the most popular, with 2.25 million admissions.George Washington Gale Ferris Jr.'s originalFerris Wheel carried over 1.5 million passengers.[3] The Midway's money-making concessions and sideshows made over $4 million in 1893 dollars, and it was the more memorable portion of the Exposition for many visitors. The Midway also featured more scholarly exhibits which were overseen byFrederic Ward Putnam, head ofHarvard University’sPeabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, and ethnologistOtis Tufton Mason of theSmithsonian Institution.[4]
In the years after the Exposition closed, "midway" came to be used in the United States to signify the area for amusements at a county orstate fair,circus, oramusement park.[5]
The Midway Plaisance led visitors from the Midway Plaisance to the Women's Building and then to the White City.[6]
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After the Exposition, the Midway Plaisance was returned to a park setting, under the renewed plans ofFrederick Law Olmsted.
In 1926, theUniversity of Chicago acquired land to the south of the Midway, which today sits between the original main campus to the north and the professional graduate schools theUniversity of Chicago Law School, theHarris School of Public Policy, theCrown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice, and theGraham School of Continuing Liberal and Professional Studies, as well as theUniversity of Chicago Press.
Later designers and artists, includingLorado Taft, andEero Saarinen added or sought to add their vision to the Midway, which hosts a statue of the father of moderntaxonomy,Carl Linnaeus, and anequestrian statue by sculptorAlbin Polasek of the Knight of Blanik, a legendaryCzech savior who emerges fromBlaník mountain in his nation's hour of need.
It has remained essentially a green area, a public resource subject to much speculation, and various plans of redevelopment. The sunken panels, home now tosoccer players andice skating and sports facility, the cross-street "bridges", and the east–west lines of trees, pay homage to Olmsted's vision.
In 1999, a new master plan for the Midway Plaisance done byOLIN, alandscape architecture firm, was unveiled by theUniversity of Chicago and theChicago Park District.
The proximity of the Midway to the university gave the school's earlyfootball teams, the Maroons, a second nickname, "Monsters of the Midway", a name later applied to theChicago Bears when the University of Chicago dropped its football program. The program has since been reinstated, and the Maroons play atStagg Field on 55th street, half a mile north of the midway.
The Midway, Lorado Taft's Boulevard of Broken Dreams, O'Connor, Jerome, Chicago Tribune, October 25, 1965.
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