Michigan Avenue to Lake Michigan
from Randolph Street to Roosevelt Road

Grant Park opens up like the prairie on which Chicago was built. Oh, all right, Chicago was built on a marsh, and the name is derived from an American Indian word meaning “stinky onion.” But Grant Park looks the way we’d like to think our natural landscape looked. The fact that it’s built on landfill doesn’t bother us a bit.

After all, it’s historic landfill. In the aftermath of the Great Fire in 1871, rubble and ruin were carted to the edge of the lake and unceremoniously dumped in. There was quite a bit of rubble. The final result is a magnificent park whose 1836 charter states that it shall remain “forever open, clear and free.” The park, once known as Lake Park, was renamed for the Civil War general who became our 18th President.

The Olmsted Brothers’ plan of 1907 was never implemented, but its aesthetic, predicated on the formal gardens of Versailles, still informs the spirit of the park. Long avenues of trees line the lakefront and mask railroad tracks cutting through the park. Discrete spaces unfold for the pedestrian like rooms created out of lawns, shrubbery, and flowers.

Ivan Mestrovic’s mounted warriors, erected in 1928 at the Congress Plaza entrance to the park, are known as “The Spearman” and “The Bowman.” As you head toward the lake, look left to see Augustus Saint-Gaudens’ second Chicago statue of Lincoln (the other is in Lincoln Park, east of the Chicago Historical Society). Ahead of you lies Buckingham Fountain, built in 1927. It was designed by competition winners Marcel François Loyau and Jacques Lambert, inspired by the waterworks of Versailles, but created from pink Georgia marble. Ironically, its hourly jets of water are now electronically controlled from Atlanta.

Aaron Montgomery Ward, of the Montgomery Wards, is the man we have to thank for the park’s uncluttered spaces. Fighting an often unpopular battle against commercial interests, Ward fought for 20 years to keep Grant Park’s greensward free for Chicago’s poor, “not for the millionaires.” A plan to build a large performing arts complex at the park’s northwestern corner is under way, presumably the result of the kind of canny deal-making for which Chicago’s city leaders are famous.

Summer brings decorous aficionados of classical music to the Petrillo Music Shell; even a torrential downpour does not damp the spirits of the hardiest of these. More audibly enthusiastic crowds throng Petrillo and the surrounding lawn for rock concerts and the Blues, Jazz, Gospel, and Country Music Festivals. The Taste of Chicago, held the week of the Fourth of July, is a greasy, burnt, sticky, soaking-wet success for the millions of people who head to the park to sample foods of many lands. (Most of them seem to be eating grilled corn, but that’s another story.) Music, giveaway booths, and kids’ activities round out the Taste.

Tip: Albin Polasek’s “Spirit of Music” sculpture has lived many places in Chicago, but now you can see her standing at the corner of Michigan and Balbo.