Sauganash Park
Park Description
Tucked away in the Sauganash neighborhood, Sauganash Park offers a great variety of programs to its patrons. Indoor facilities include a gymnasium, a fitness center, and an assembly hall with a stage. Outdoors, Sauganash offers two softball fields, two basketball standards, four tennis courts and a playground.
Area youth play sports, such as volleyball, basketball, flag football, t-ball baseball, softball, floor hockey, outdoor tennis, indoor and outdoor soccer, and Nerf® football. Youth also participate in day camp, sports camp, recreational tumbling, team tumbling and girls’ gymnastics team. Teens play softball and basketball, and participate in fun and games. Also, many youth and teens become members of the Sauganash Park sports club.
Preschoolers get started early building skills in t-ball baseball, tumbling, and indoor soccer. The park offers traditional early childhood recreation classes— moms, pops, and tots interaction, mini-monkeys, play group, preschool, tiny tot tumbling, story telling, and playschool. Adults join in athletics with basketball, co-recreational volleyball, and conditioning. Adults also take advantage of the fitness center including weight training programs and women’s circuit training/low impact exercise and toning.
On the cultural side, Sauganash Park offers music classes for all ages. Pre-schoolers, starting as young as 18 months, participate in sing and move along, tiny tot theatre, tap and ballet, and music and movement. Youth choose from hip hop, tap and ballet, arts and crafts, play production, acting, instrumental, guitar, and piano. Teens participate in technical theatre workshops, director’s workshops, scene studies and performance workshops, where they act in full-scale productions for the community. For adults, there are classes in piano, band, and guitar. Seniors also enjoy playing piano or playing in the band.
History
Sauganash Park and its surrounding neighborhood bear the name of Potawatomi chief and early Chicagoan Sauganash (1780-1841), also known as Billy Caldwell. Born in Canada of a Wyandot Indian mother and an Irish father, Sauganash ("The Englishman"), was educated by Jesuit priests at the French settlement of Detroit. Sauganash became a Chicago resident in 1820, and was elected a justice of the peace six years later. In 1830, the federal government granted him a 1,200-acre reservation along the North Branch of the Chicago River. Sauganash sold most of his land six years later, moving to Council Bluffs, Iowa, to join the Potowatomis.
For nearly a century, farmers held much of the reservation land. In the mid-1920s, however, Henry G. Zander, Sr. and George F. Koester began to subdivide the area for homes. In 1926, residents of northwest Chicago's prestigious new Sauganash development petitioned for a park board to create recreational facilities in their growing community. The newly-formed Sauganash Park District acquired nearly four acres of property from developer Koester in late 1928. In August 1930, the district approved park plans and began improvements including walks, tennis and horse shoe courts, and a wading pool. Work was completed by Christmas Eve, and the district illuminated the park lights in celebration. Construction of a single-story, English-style fieldhouse with a 300-seat auditorium began in March of 1934.
The Chicago Park District assumed ownership of Sauganash Park only two months later. The consolidated park district added ball fields and playground equipment and made other improvements over time. In the mid-1970s, the park district acquired another acre-and-a-half of adjacent property and built a large gymnasium addition to the fieldhouse
