Revere Park
Park Description
Located along Irving Park Road and next door to the Neighborhood Boys and Girls Club, Revere Park opens its doors to a steady stream of traffic from children and adults seeking fun athletic leagues and instruction. Whether its baseball, softball, football, soccer, volleyball, basketball or even rugby, there is a sport for everyone at Revere Park. Behind the park fieldhouse also sits four outdoor tennis courts and a playground.
During the school year, Revere Park hosts a strong PARK KIDS after-school program that runs from 3 to 6 p.m. every weekday. Adults visit the park for visual arts, such as drawing, painting and stained glass instruction. Revere has also organized a club for deaf and hard-of-hearing teens, at which they can play sports, learn dance moves or just talk and relate to each other.
The Revere Park fieldhouse contains a beautifully-restored auditorium with stage, which can be permitted for private events. The auditorium also comes to life for summer camp talent shows, seasonal theatre productions and other special events.
History
Revere Park lies just east of the Chicago River's North Branch, in the North Center neighborhood, once home to a nationally important brick making industry. In 1898, Wolfram Blaul built a brick factory on the 9-acre property that would later become Revere Park. In little more than a decade, however, the site's clay pits were being used as a city dump.
By 1917, River Park District Commissioner John J. O'Shea had tired of this eyesore, and began to push for a park on the site. O'Shea quickly won over the park board, which acquired the property in 1921. Improvements began the following year. Blaul's original cottage was remodeled as a fieldhouse, and some planting began. In 1926, another River Park District board member, Albert F. Otte, suggested that the new park, then known as O'Shea Park, be dedicated to the honor of patriot Paul Revere (1735-1818). Revere, a silversmith, made a famous midnight ride through the Massachusetts countryside to warn of the British approach during the early days of the American Revolution.
By 1928, Jacob L. Crane, Jr., a landscape architect and an early River Park board member, had prepared detailed plans for Revere Park. The Chicago Landscape Company executed a modified version of Crane's plans that included an athletic fields and tennis courts set in a green landscape of trees and curving paths. Chicago architect Clarence Hatzfeld designed a slate-roofed, brick fieldhouse, dedicated in 1931. Blaul's old cottage was remodeled yet again, this time for use as a community house.
In 1934, the River Park District and 21 other independent park commissions consolidated into the unified Chicago Park District. The Chicago Park District installed a wading pool with sand courts and a shelter house in 1948. Around 1960, the park district demolished the original cottage, replacing it with a new boys' club building. The park received a new soft surface playground in 1989.
