Origin
On September 4, 1842, the city received a 3-acre (12,000 m2) parcel that was donated by the members of the American Land Company for use as a public park. The property had once been a cow path with a well for farmers to water their cattle. The donors stipulated the name Washington Square. Between 1869 and the 1890s, the city improved Washington Square with lawn, trees, bisecting diagonal walks, limestone coping, picket fencing, and an attractive Victorian fountain. By the time Alderman McCormick became President of Drainage Board in 1906, the fountain had been razed and the park had deteriorated. Alderman McCormick devoted his aldermanic salary to improving the park. He donated a $600 fountain, and the city allocated an additional $10,000 to rehabilitate the park. By the 1910s, the neighborhood surrounding Washington Square had become more diverse.
Read more about this topic: Washington Square Historic District (Chicago)
Famous quotes containing the word origin:
“Though I do not believe that a plant will spring up where no seed has been, I have great faith in a seed,—a, to me, equally mysterious origin for it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Someone had literally run to earth
In an old cellar hole in a byroad
The origin of all the family there.
Thence they were sprung, so numerous a tribe
That now not all the houses left in town
Made shift to shelter them without the help
Of here and there a tent in grove and orchard.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“In the woods in a winter afternoon one will see as readily the origin of the stained glass window, with which Gothic cathedrals are adorned, in the colors of the western sky seen through the bare and crossing branches of the forest.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)