Lorraine Dixon Park
History
In the 1880s, Samuel E. Gross, a real estate speculator who has been considered the P.T. Barnum of working?class communities, began developing the Dauphin Park Subdivision. Donating a long strip of land to the city as parkland, Gross named the park, adjacent street, and entire development for Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, derived from the title for the first born and heir to the throne of France. Although the Dauphin Park community was soon settled by Hungarian and Irish railroad workers, the parkland remained largely unimproved for many years. In 1913, the city's Special Park Commission finally began extensive work on the 5?acre strip, constructing a drainage system and filling and grading the land. Within the next few years, lawn, trees, and shrubs were planted, and tennis courts installed. By the 1940s, the city created a skating pond in the center of the parkway during wintertime. As many as 4,790 people skated there per season.
In 1959, the city turned Dauphin Park over to the Chicago Park District along with more than 250 other properties. After adding a children's playground in the 1960s, the park district created a basketball court and made substantial landscape improvements a decade later.