Chicago’s boulevard system is one of the nation’s largest and oldest, stretching 28 miles across 540 acres of green space to link seven inland parks with Lake Michigan. First envisioned by developer John S Wright and enabled by the 1869 Illinois parks bills, it was shaped by designers including Frederick Law Olmstead, William LeBaron Jenney, and later Jens Jensen. Much of the system was built during the late 19th-century real estate boom, when the boulevards became popular places for promenading, horseback riding, and carriage travel and helped attract residential development, including mansions along Grand, now King Drive, and Drexel boulevards. Chicago’s grand park system gained national attention during the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Jackson Park and along the Midway Plaisance, inspiring other cities to create their own park and parkway systems. In the early 1930s the three park commissions were consolidated into the Chicago Park District, and in 1959 responsibility for the boulevards passed to the City of Chicago. The system remains a testament to the vision that helped make Chicago a national model, and it includes monuments such as Drexel Fountain, Fountain of Time, the Carl von Linne Monument, the Masaryk Memorial, the Victory Monument, the Washington Memorial, the McKinley Monument, the Marquette Monument, One Family-One World, Independence Fountain, and the Illinois Centennial Column.