![]() ![]() At the time, transforming the Jackson Park fairgrounds back into usable parkland was the priority, and the canal was proving to be an expensive proposition. They formally adopted Olmsted, Olmsted & Eliot’s plan for the Midway Plaisance with the canal in 1894.Īlthough the South Park Commissioners negotiated with the Illinois Central Railroad Company for permission to build part of the canal on railroad right-of-way, the project was delayed again. The commissioners instructed Olmsted to create a revised plan for the canal, and asked him to estimate the expense of the project including the cost of gondolas. Emphasizing the great success of the electric launches, gondolas, and other types of boats at the World’s Columbian Exposition, Olmsted recommended that his vision for a canal through the Midway Plaisance canal should be considered. ![]() After it closed, the South Park Commissioners hired Olmsted’s firm, then known as Olmsted, Olmsted, and Eliot, to transform the fairgrounds back into parkland. More than twenty million people had visited the fair during the sixth month period in which it was open in 1893. The twenty-minute ride made two revolutions and cost fifty cents per customer (which was the same cost as a full day admission price for the fair.) Standing to a height of 264-feet, it had thirty-six cars, each with a capacity of sixty people. The most iconic attraction on the Midway was the world’s first Ferris wheel. These attractions were allowed to charge extra, and helped the fair become a financial success. Burnham to transform the largely unfinished grounds into the “White City.” The fair authorities decided to use the Midway Plaisance as the site of amusements, restaurants, foreign villages, and ethnological exhibits. Two decades later, Jackson Park was selected as the site for the World’s Columbian Exposition, and Olmsted worked closely with architect Daniel H. (There is a French word plaisance that roughly translates to “place for boating,” however some dictionaries believe the word is an obsolete spelling of “pleasance,” a secluded part of the landscape or garden.) Despite the importance of the canal to the overall design of the park system, its construction was put on on-hold due to financial problems after the Great Fire of 1871. Olmsted & Vaux named the center landscape the Midway Plaisance. This waterway would link with Lake Michigan on the east and with a smaller lagoon called the Mere at the Upper Division (Washington Park) on the west via a long formal canal and pleasure drive, accessible to people walking, riding horses (and carriages), and boating. The designers envisioned an intricate system of lushly planted lagoons covering about one-third of the Lower Division (Jackson Park). Interpreting the lake as a tremendous object of sublime scenery, Olmsted & Vaux used water as the guiding theme for the park’s original plan of 1871. asserted that, “If a search had been made for the least park-like ground within miles of the city, nothing better meeting the requirement could have been found.” He believed, however, that the site possessed one important asset- its relationship with Lake Michigan. ![]() The South Park Commissioners acquired land for the park from 1869-1873.Ĭoncerned about the flat and marshy conditions of the unimproved site, Frederick Law Olmsted Sr. ![]() Soon after the Illinois Legislature established the South Park Commission in 1869 to create and maintain the park, the newly-appointed commissioners hired Olmsted & Vaux, the nationally renowned designers of New York’s Central Park, to lay out the 1055-acre park. All three sites were originally conceived as a single landscape known as South Park. The Midway Plaisance is a magnificent linear stretch of parkland between Jackson and Washington parks. ![]()
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