6871 W. Belden Ave.
Chicago, IL 60707
Hours
Park Hours
Description
Rutherford Sayre Park is located in Chicago’s Montclare community (with Oak Park Avenue at the eastern edge of the park—and close to Chicago’s border with Elmwood Park: two blocks south of where Fullerton Avenue changes its name to Grand Avenue).
The park is 13.94 acres in size, and its fieldhouse contains a fitness center, gymnasium, and kitchen. Outside, the park offers two junior baseball fields, a softball field, a combination football-soccer field, two tennis courts, a new ADA soft-surface playground with spray pool, a nature area, plus passive recreation areas.
Rutherford Sayre Park offers a great variety of programming for all ages. Toddlers / preschoolers can enjoy Fun & Games, Moms Pops & Tots Interaction. Recreation includes the fitness center / weight training, baseball, basketball, dodgeball, flag football, floor hockey, golf, seasonal sports, soccer, team tumbling, volleyball, and (Olympic) weight lifting. In the summer, youth can attend the Park District’s popular six-week day camp.
On the cultural side, Rutherford Sayre Park offers several visual arts programs, including arts & crafts, drawing & (water color) painting, and ceramics. Nature programming involves a community garden. The teen art camp has created several colorful mosaics within the park's grounds.
History
Rutherford Sayre Park was created from three separate parks, lying adjacent to the Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul Railroad tracks on the City's northwest side, had long been treated as one by area residents. All three were set aside as parkland just before World War I and came under the control of the Chicago Park District. The park properties were donated by two local families, the Sayres and Rutherfords, who had farmed and later subdivided the surrounding area. The western portions of the parkland had been part of the Sayre homestead, purchased by William E. Sayre in the early 1830s. Thomas A. Rutherford, the area's first postmaster, donated the eastern section, at the southwest corner of Belden and Oak Park Avenues. In 1916, the Northwest Park District began to improve the area north of the Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul tracks, erecting a fieldhouse with an assembly hall and a gymnasium. Per a stipulation in the Rutherford deed, the fieldhouse originally included a bowling alley as well, an unusual feature for a Chicago park fieldhouse. In the 1920s, the Chicago Landscape Company designed a spray pool for the park. The park became part of the Chicago Park District’s portfolio when the Northwest Park District and 21 other park districts were consolidated into the Chicago Park District in 1934. The Chicago Park District acquired ownership of additional park land from City of Chicago in 1957 pursuant to the Chicago Park and City Exchange of Functions Act. In mid-1999, the Chicago Park District combined these three of adjacent parks (Rutherford, Sayre, and Rutherford Sayre) to form Rutherford Sayre Park.
Advisory Council
1st Wendesday of the month at 7:00pm