Brands Park
Park Description
Located at Elston and Henderson in the Avondale community, BrandsPark totals 5.27 acres and features a large gymnasium, clubrooms and a woodshop.Outdoors, the park features a new ADA accessible playground, tennis and basketball courts and ballfields.BrandsPark is known for their Early Childhood Recreation, Basketball, and after-school programs.
Young park-goers can participate in activities such as, Cubs Care Baseball, Teen Club, Table Tennis, Indoor Soccer and Mightyfitkidz at the facility.On the cultural side, BrandPark offers woodshop classes where children and adults create unique projects.In the summer, youth attend day camp, and enjoy the open green space and playground.
Parents gather at BrandsPark with their preschoolers for moms, pops and tots.Dance, Cheerleading and Art & ABC’s classes are also available for preschool-age residents.
In addition to programs, BrandsPark hosts fun special events for the whole family, such as Bedtime Stories with Santa and the Annual Valentine Dance.
History
Brands Park bears the name of the German-American family that owned the site for many years. Formally established as a park in the 1920s, the property was used as a picnic grove for years before. The Brands grove had local notoriety as the site of many Clan-na-gael, Schwabenverein, and old settlers' picnics.
Shortly after the 1917 formation of the River Park District, one of 22 independent park commissions consolidated into the Chicago Park District in 1934, residents of the Avondale neighborhood petitioned the new park board to purchase the Brands Picnic Grove site. Negotiations with the property owner proved difficult, and land acquisition was not completed until 1927. Improvements began in 1928, following plans developed by the Chicago Landscape Company. The new facilities included a playground; basketball, horse shoe, and tennis courts; and an athletic field that was flooded for ice skating in winter. These recreational features were set in an attractive landscape of lawn and trees. The River Park District adapted an existing building on the site for fieldhouse purposes.
Shortly after the Chicago Park District took over Brands Park in 1934, Chicago architect Clarence Hatzfeld enlarged and remodeled the fieldhouse to include club, game, and shower rooms; a workshop; and a community hall. In the mid-1970s, the park district demolished the old brick structure, which had deteriorated significantly. In its place, the district built a new, larger fieldhouse, redesigning the surrounding landscape. More recent improvements included rehabilitating the playground, tennis courts, and plantings.
