Editing Grant Park (Chicago) (section)

==History==
[[File:Art Institute 1893.gif|thumb|300px|left|This 1893 sketch of the [[Art Institute of Chicago]] shows most of today's Grant Park area setting still Lake Michigan-claimed with railroad tracks running along the shoreline behind the Museum]]
[[File:Nationalgeograph351919nat.pdf|thumb|left|page=27|Grant Park as seen in the January 1919 issue of ''[[National Geographic Magazine]]''.]]
The original plans for the town of Chicago left the area east of Michigan Avenue unsubdivided and vacant, and purchasers of Michigan Avenue lots were promised that it would remain unoccupied. When the former [[Fort Dearborn]] Reserve became part of the townsite in 1839, the plan of the area east of Michigan Avenue south of Randolph was marked "Public ground. Forever to remain vacant of buildings."<ref>Macaluso, p. 12</ref>

The city officially designated the land as a [[park]] on April 29, 1844, naming it Lake Park. When the [[Illinois Central Railroad]] was built into Chicago in 1852, it was permitted to lay track along the lakefront on a causeway built offshore from the park. The resulting lagoon became stagnant, and was largely filled in 1871 with debris from the [[Great Chicago Fire]], increasing the parkland. In 1896, the city began extending the park into the lake with [[Land reclamation|landfill]], beyond the rail lines.<ref name=EOCW>{{cite encyclopedia |last=Cremin |first=Dennis H. |title=Waterfront |pages=864–6 |editor1-last=Grossman |editor1-first=James R. |editor2-last=Keating |editor2-first=Ann Durkin |editor3-last=Reiff |editor3-first=Janice L. |url=http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/1326.html |date=October 15, 2004 |encyclopedia=The Encyclopedia of Chicago |publisher=The University of Chicago Press |isbn=978-0-2263-1015-2}}</ref> On October 9, 1901, the park was renamed Grant Park in honor of [[American Civil War]] commanding General and [[President of the United States|United States President]] Ulysses S. Grant. At the [[1868 Republican National Convention]] in Chicago, Grant had been nominated for his first presidential term.

The legal restrictions prohibiting any buildings in the park were ignored in the 19th century, as various civic buildings were sited there. At various times, a post office, exposition center, armory, and even an [[Union Base-Ball Grounds|early home field]] of the baseball club now known as the [[Chicago Cubs]] were built in the park. A 1904 plan prepared by the [[Olmsted Brothers]] recommended locating the Field Museum as the park's centerpiece, an idea integrated into [[Daniel Burnham]] and [[Edward H. Bennett]]'s 1909 ''[[Plan of Chicago]]''.<ref>Fink, J. Theodore. ''Grant Park Tomorrow,'' 1978, p. 42{{full citation needed|date=July 2020}}</ref> Chicago businessman [[Aaron Montgomery Ward]] ultimately fought four court battles, opposed by nearly every civic leader, to keep the park free of buildings.<ref>{{cite web |title=Ward Case Summaries |url=http://www.neweastside.org/decisions.html |publisher=NewEastside.org |date=November 18, 2008 |access-date=May 15, 2011 |archive-date=July 27, 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110727121010/http://www.neweastside.org/DECISIONS.html |url-status=live }}</ref> The one exception to which Ward consented was for the [[Art Institute of Chicago]], constructed in 1892.

{{multiple image
| align = right
| image1 = 1968 Democratic National Convention, Chicago. Sept 68 C15 10 1316 , Photo by Bea A Corson, Chicago. Purchased at estate sale in 2011 by Victor Grigas Released Public Domain.tif
| width1 = 200
| alt1 = 
| caption1 = 
| image2 = 1968 Democratic National Convention, Chicago. Sept 68 C15 8 1313, Photo by Bea A Corson, Chicago. Purchased at estate sale in 2011 by Victor Grigas Released Public Domain.tiff
| width2 = 200
| alt2 = 
| caption2 = 
| footer = A speaker with a megaphone (left) addressing a crowd of protestors (right) at the [[General John Logan Memorial]] in Grant Park during the [[1968 Democratic National Convention protest activity|1968 Democratic National Convention]]
}}

In the early 20th century, Grant Park was expanded with further landfill&mdash;much of it from the excavations of the [[Chicago Tunnel Company]]&mdash;and developed with a very formal landscape design by Edward Bennett. More [[Land reclamation|land fill]] in the 1910s and 1920s provided sites for the [[Adler Planetarium]], [[Field Museum of Natural History]], and [[Shedd Aquarium]], which were linked together as the [[Museum Campus]] in 1998. In 2004, a section of northern Grant Park, previously occupied by Illinois Central railyards and parking lots, was covered and redeveloped as [[Millennium Park]].