The Chicago Park District's plan to replace the
large limestone blocks around Promontory Point and elsewhere
along the lakefront with a concrete and steel revetment is part
of a long history of attempts to protect the city's shoreline
from the ravages of the natural action of our great Lake Michigan.
That history, however, is not well known but the recent reconstruction
of much of the beachfront along South Lake Shore Drive has revealed
artifacts of one of the earliest large-scale projects designed
to keep the lake at bay along Jackson Park.
There is a strip of beach at about 58th Street between the sidewalk
and Lake Michigan that, until recently, was paved with a layer
of five to twelve inch rectangular granite blocks that were quite
visible to anyone who noticed them. Those blocks were cut and
installed in 1887 and 1888 under the direction of the South Park
Commission (SPC). Created in 1869 by the Illinois legislature,
the SPC had come into existence largely through the lobbying
efforts of Hyde Park founder Paul Cornell, later a commissioner
for the district, and other prominent local associates. Its mission
was to create and maintain a public park on 1057 acres of land
that eventually would become Jackson Park, Washington Park, the
Midway Plaisance and Gage Park. It was also empowered to establish
and maintain 13.87 miles of boulevards, including Grand Boulevard
(now Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Drive), Drexel Boulevard,
and Garfield Boulevard. The latter is linked at its eastern end
to Washington Park and to Gage Park (named for George W. Gage,
an early South Park Commissioner) at its westernmost entrance.
The SPC had, by any measure, a daunting responsibility. In its
early years, the SPC was largely concerned with working out the
legal issues and claims involved in assembling the land for the
parks and laying the plans for the design of what was then named
South Park |
