Marquette Park

Marquette Park pays tribute to Father Jacques Marquette (1637-1675), the famous French Jesuit missionary and explorer. At more than 300 acres in size, it is the largest of the revolutionary neighborhood parks created by the South Park Commission in the early 20th century. Superintendent J. Frank Foster conceived the new parks as beautifully landscaped "breathing spaces" that would provide educational and social services to the city's congested immigrant neighborhoods. Nationally renowned landscape architects the Olmsted Brothers created plans for the entire system of 14 new parks in 1903. The firm's impressive scheme for Marquette Park included a golf course on two islands surrounded by naturalistic lagoons; indoor and outdoor gymnasiums; swimming and wading pools; a children's playground; formal gardens; and a concert grove. Although the first 10 neighborhood parks opened to the public in 1905, due to drainage problems and the site's large size, Marquette Park's improvements occurred slowly, often deviating from the original plan. Two of the park's earliest features were its 18-hole golf course and a nursery of nearly 90,000 trees and shrubs. The commissioners soon began converting existing frame houses and out-buildings on the site to park uses such as a warming shelter for skaters and a small fieldhouse. By 1917, the park included playing fields, a children's playground, tennis courts, propagating houses for the nursery, and a large, classically-designed golf shelter. In 1934, Marquette Park became part of the Chicago Park District when the city's 22 park commissions were consolidated into a single agency. Using federal relief funds, the park district soon converted the golf shelter into a more substantial fieldhouse, and built comfort stations, and a series of footbridges leading to the islands. Through public subscription in 1935, an Art Deco-style monument commemorating Lithuanian-American aviators Darius and Girenas was installed in Marquette Park.