Dunham (Robert) Park

In 1945, at the end of World War II, Robert J. Dunham, President of the Chicago Park District Board of Commissioners, announced a major new initiative to bring the benefits of parks and recreation to every neighborhood in the city. As part of this effort to create new parks for the first time in many years, a citizens' advisory committee submitted a list of recommended sites in 1948. Among them was a 14-acre site in the rapidly growing Portage Park neighborhood. The park district had to condemn land from reluctant home owners, an issue which even led to protesters filing into a 1945 board meeting. After the entire site was acquired in 1951, the Engineering Department created a plan for the new park. The park district began some improvements in 1953, however all of the houses on the site were not razed until 1958. By the early 1960s, the park included an athletic field, a children's playground, tennis courts, and a comfort station. Finally, in 1976, the district constructed a modern fieldhouse in the park. When the park district's naming committee made its proposals in the early 1950s, they suggested that one of the new parks be named in honor of Robert J. Dunham (1876-1948). Born and raised in Chicago, Dunham was the oldest son of Captain James Sears Dunham, one of the city's leading mariners. Dunham became a prominent Chicago businessman, responsible for organizing the Universal Oil Products Company. He entered public life during the Depression as Chairman of the Illinois Emergency Relief Commission in 1933. The following year, the city's 22 independent park boards were consolidated into the Chicago Park District, and Dunham was appointed its first president, continuing to serve in that capacity through 1945.