The Boulevard System

Chicago’s boulevard system is one of the nation’s largest and oldest, a 28-mile network with 540 acres of green space linking seven inland parks and Lake Michigan. Originally built on the city’s outskirts, it now encircles the heart of Chicago and lies within three blocks of the homes of one out of every six residents. Its longest segment is Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Drive at 4.5 miles, its shortest is Central Park at less than one mile, its widest is the Midway Plaisance at 750 feet, and its narrowest is Diversey Parkway at 66 feet. In 1837, when Chicago adopted the motto Urbs in Horto, or “City in a Garden,” the city had very few parks. Developer John S. Wright proposed a vast network of parks and boulevards to encourage development, envisioning a chain of parks and parkways surrounding the city, but it took two decades for the idea to gain public support. The 1869 Illinois parks bills created three regional park commissions to build a unified system of parks connected by pleasure drives. The South Commission hired Frederick Law Olmstead, whose landscapes used informal groupings of trees and meandering pathways, while the West Commission’s lead designer, William LeBaron Jenney, planned geometric paths complemented by formal rows of trees. Later, Jens Jensen, founder of Prairie-style landscape architecture, gave the west parks and boulevards a more natural appearance with native plantings. Legal challenges prevented construction of the North Commission’s design for Diversey Parkway. Much of the system was built during the late 19th-century real estate boom, and the completed boulevards became popular places for recreation and social life, where Chicagoans promenaded and rode horses and carriages along exceptionally smooth roads. The boulevards also attracted residential development, and some of the grandest mansions rose along Grand, now King Drive, and Drexel boulevards. Chicago’s 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Jackson Park and along the Midway Plaisance displayed a park system that few American cities could equal and inspired Kansas City, Minneapolis, and Washington, D.C., to begin developing their own park and parkway systems. In the early 1930s, the three park commissions were consolidated into the Chicago Park District, which maintained the boulevards until responsibility passed to the City of Chicago in 1959. The parks and boulevards remain a testament to the vision that helped make Chicago a national model.

Chicago, Illinois · United States