Midway Plaisance
Jackson Park Historic Landscape District and Midway Plaisance | |
Chicago, Illinois | |
Built | 1871 |
---|---|
Architect | Frederick Law Olmsted, Lorado Taft |
NRHP reference No. | 72001565 [1] |
Added to NRHP | December 15, 1972 |
The Midway Plaisance, known locally as the Midway, is a
Intended as part of the
Origin of the name
The word "plaisance" is both the French 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 South Park Commission plan
The Midway Plaisance began as a vision in the 1850s of
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 (see Encyclopedia of Chicago Map). The firm of Olmsted, Vaux, and Co., famous for creating New York City's Central 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 the Great 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.
World's Columbian Exposition
The World's Columbian Exposition of 1893 was held in the underdeveloped parts of the South Park. The worldwide celebration of Columbus' transfer of "the torch of civilization to the New World" in 1492 was one of the most successful and influential of world'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 on
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 or state fair, circus, or amusement park.[5]
The Midway Plaisance led visitors from the Midway Plaisance to the Women's Building and then to the White City.[6]
University of Chicago
Following the Exposition, the Midway Plaisance was returned to a park setting, under the renewed plans of Frederick Law Olmsted. Over the ensuing decades, the Midway gradually came to be encompassed by the University of Chicago, which expanded in 1926 to be located on either side of it. Today the Midway sits between the original main campus to the north and the professional graduate schools the University of Chicago Law School, the Harris School of Public Policy, the Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice, and the Graham School of Continuing Liberal and Professional Studies, as well as, the University of Chicago Press to the south.
Later designers and artists, including Lorado Taft, and Eero Saarinen added or sought to add their vision to the Midway. A statue of the father of modern taxonomy, Carl Linnaeus, and an equestrian statue by sculptor Albin Polasek of the Knight of Blanik, a legendary Czech savior who emerges from Blaník mountain in his nation's hour of need, grace the Midway.
It has remained essentially a green area, a public resource subject to much speculation, and various periodic plans of redevelopment. The sunken panels, home now to
In 1999, a new master plan for the Midway Plaisance done by OLIN, a landscape architecture firm, was unveiled by the University of Chicago and the Chicago Park District.
The proximity of the Midway to the university gave the school's early football teams, the Maroons, a second nickname, "Monsters of the Midway", a name later applied to the Chicago Bears when the University of Chicago dropped its football program. The program has since been reinstated, and the Maroons play at Stagg Field on 55th street, half a mile north of the midway.
References
- ^ "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service. March 15, 2006.
- ^ Morse, Patricia L. (2022-09-12). "Hyde Park Stories: The Midway Plaisance". Hyde Park Herald. Retrieved 2023-10-17.
- ^ Ferris wheels - an illustrated history, Norman D. Anderson
- ^ Joseph Horowitz (2012). Moral Fire: Musical Portraits from America's Fin de Siècle. University of California Press. p. 75.
- ^ Harper, Douglas. "midway". Chicago Manual Style (CMS). Online Etymology Dictionary. Retrieved 12 April 2013.
- ^ "World's Columbian Exposition: The Legacy of the Fair".
The Midway, Lorado Taft's Boulevard of Broken Dreams, O'Connor, Jerome, Chicago Tribune, October 25, 1965.