Hamlin Park
History
The Lincoln Park Commission created Hamlin Park in 1910. Although the park commission had been established in 1869 to improve and manage Lincoln Park, in the early 1900s administrators began creating new parks and playgrounds in congested neighborhoods within their jurisdiction. In 1908, residents of the area around Damen and Belmont Avenues petitioned the commission for a new park in their neighborhood. The following year, 210 members of the nearby Galilee Baptist Church submitted a letter urging the park's development. Later in 1909, the Lincoln Park Commission acquired the eight-acre park site.
Dwight H. Perkins of the firm Perkins, Fellows, and Hamilton designed the Hamlin Park fieldhouse. Perkins played a significant role in Chicago's progressive reform movement and was a noted Prairie School architect. In addition to the Hamlin Park fieldhouse, he designed several Lincoln Park buildings including the Daily News Fresh Air Sanitarium (now Theater on the Lake), Seward Park's fieldhouse, and Stanton Park's original fieldhouse. Of the fieldhouses, Hamlin Park's was most extensive. It had men's and women's gymnasiums, locker and changing rooms, an assembly hall, club rooms, a lunch room, a branch of the Chicago Public Library, and an outdoor swimming pool. In the 1930s, architect Clarence Hatzfeld made alterations to the building.
The Lincoln Park Commission named most of their neighborhood parks in honor of members of President Abraham Lincoln's cabinet. Hamlin Park honors Hannibal Hamlin (1809-1891), Lincoln's vice-president.
