Grant Park

Proudly referred to as Chicago's "front yard," Grant Park is among the city's loveliest and most prominent parks.

The site of three world-class museums -- the Art Institute, the Field Museum of Natural History, and the Shedd Aquarium -- the park includes the museum campus, a 1995 transformation of paved areas into beautiful greenspace. Grant Park's centerpiece is the Clarence Buckingham Memorial Fountain, built in 1927 to provide a monumental focal point while protecting the park's breathtaking lakefront views. Grant Park's beginnings date to 1835, when foresighted citizens, fearing commercial lakefront development, lobbied to protect the open space.

As a result, the park's original area east of Michigan Avenue was designated "public ground forever to remain vacant of buildings." Officially named Lake Park in 1847, the site soon suffered from lakefront erosion. The Illinois Central Railroad agreed to build a breakwater to protect the area in exchange for permission for an offshore train trestle. After the Great Fire of 1871, the area between the shore and trestle became a dump site for piles of charred rubble, the first of many landfill additions.

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