Chicago Park District - History

History

In the 1860s, Chicago already had about 40 small parks, but no central plan, and it fell far short when compared to other major cities in the country. Lincoln Park was Chicago's first large park, created in 1867. Dr. John H. Rauch MD, who was a member of the Chicago Board of Health and later a president of the Illinois State Board of Health, played a key role in establishing Lincoln park by persuading city officials to close several festering cemeteries filled with shallow graves of victims of infectious epidemics. Rauch next formulated a central plan for parks across the entire city, noting that they were "the lungs of the city", and pointing out that Chicago's parks were inferior to those in New York's Central Park, Baltimore's Druid Park, and Philadelphia's Fairmount Park. His influence was key in setting up Chicago's modern park system.

The current Chicago Park District was created in 1934 by the Illinois Legislature under the Park Consolidation Act. By provisions of that act, the Chicago Park District consolidated and superseded the then-existing 22 separate park districts in Chicago, the largest three of which were the Lincoln Park, West Park, and South Park Districts, all of which had been established in 1869.

The agency was long considered a dumping ground for political appointees; most famously, it was run by Ed Kelly, one of the "Eddies" who frustrated Mayor Harold Washington in the 1980s. The size and personnel of the park district was dramatically pared down during the reform administration of Mayor Richard M. Daley-appointed CEO Forrest Claypool in the mid-1990s.

The district has been run by Tim Mitchell since 2004. During his tenure, the park district has initiated a program of renovating and beautifying existing parks and initiating the building of a number of new parks in recent years such as Ping Tom Memorial Park, DuSable Park and most notably Millennium Park. The Chicago Park District has also made an effort to return programming to the neighborhoods through the parks and created a lakefront concert venue on Northerly Island on the site of the former Meigs Field airport.