Midway Plaisance Park
Brought to you by Hyde Park-Kenwood Advisory Council, its Parks Committee and its website www.hydepark.org with help from the Midway Advisory Council (MAC). HPKCC Parks Chair. Join the Conference.
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Midway Plaisance ParkBrought to you by Hyde Park-Kenwood Advisory Council, its Parks Committee and its website www.hydepark.org with help from the Midway Advisory Council (MAC). HPKCC Parks Chair. Join the Conference. |
A special use center of the Chicago Park District, 1130 E. Midway, Chicago,
IL 60637
Center
Director: Rick Shaheen (312 745-2470, midway@chicagoparkdistrict.com),
Area Manager: A.J. Jackson, Region Manager: Liz Millan. (312 747-7661). Midweek@Midway.
Sports Camp
Laid out with long vistas and tree lines at the turn of the century, the "Midway" between Washington and Jackson Parks, followed the vision of Frederick Law Olmsted, minus his impossible dream to create a Venetian canal. Later designers: Lorado Taft, Eero Saarinen and recent framework plan designers.
It's part of Chicago's great boulevard system as well as the Chicago Park District South Region. It gave its name to the sideshow sections of amusement parks from the World's Columbian Exposition. Take the Virtual Midway Tour (From Olmsted to the Fair; today.)
Ice
Skating call 312 745-2470 or 312 743-PLAY because it's weather permitting. Council.
Rink opens Friday, November 23, day after Thanksgiving. $4 children, $4 adults.
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Away:
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| Vista west of the central, sunken panels from the Masaryk monument and of the north panels from opposite International House (1414 E). Upper right a soccer game by Cottage Grove (note Boulevards kiosk). |  |
Midway Plaisance Advisory Council You can help make decisions on an area undergoing transformation within tradition and which has a highly active recreational, cultural and educational program based in the Ice Skating Rink Warming House. The council is trying to meet on 2nd Wednesdays 6:30 at the Warming House between Ellis and University avenues. Principal contacts are David Guyer at the University of Chicago Office of Community Affairs, 773 834-4549 and Center Director Rick Shaheen (312-745-2470.) A full schedule of concerts and films for next summer is nearly completed.
Next council meetings—tba, 6:30 pm. (Normally 6:30 on 3rd Wednesdays). Skate Rink Warming House (fieldhouse), center panel between Woodlawn and Ellis Avenues. Agenda includes planning for the summer Midweek on the Midway concert and movie series, including a later start, after 4th of July.
New furnishings are installed that make the Warming House more comfortable, better looking, serviceable, and easier to maintain. The University heavily contributes. 2005-6 winter numbers were a great success despite often poor weather. The instructors are very good.
Scheduling is almost complete for Midweek on the Midway (see below) despite worries about growing competition with movies from other parks. MAC asks retention of the present projection vendor.
Summer Sports Camp will be at Nichols; Midway will be used by other camps for roller blading and sport-court activities. Playing fields are being aerated.
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312 745-2470, midway@chicagoparkdistrict.com. General skate schedule 312 747-0233.
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Enjoy the Midway Winter Garden and Reader's Garden.
The University of Chicago Master Plan/Midway Plaisance (click Midway Plaisance Plan and Midway Skating Rink.)
What's Said about the Midway: Letter from Hank Webber to the Hyde Park Herald, Feb. 2003 (a full outline of plans and program), article about the opening of the North Winter Garden.
Construction
on two Midway Plaisance gardens--Readers Garden and Winter Garden, a joint project
between the Chicago Park District and the University of Chicago, began September
5, 2002, when the lawn panel bounded by Ellis Avenue, 59th Street, Woodlawn
Avenue, and the North Plaisance Drive was fenced off as a construction zone.
Key features already there were the Linne Statue (to be focus of the Readers
Garden) and the Skating Rink chiller plant (needing screening by the Winter
Garden). There are three parts to the project: planting of the new gardens;
realigning the walkways; and installing a new chiller enclosure.
The project's first phase [was]... completed by the end of November when the planting of all the woody plant materials [low to high conifers mainly] w[as] finished, and all walkways [were] again... open for use. The Chiller Enclosure [wa]s also... install[ed last] fall. In the spring, the perennials [were] planted, and the project [was] completed June 1, 2003.
Linne- see description
below.
Anticipated is a smaller winter garden in the south panel (at 60th) opposite the North Winter Garden.
For information, please contact U of C Plant Dept. Project Manager at (773) 834-1840. [revised from Joyce Griffin, Executive Administrator, Facilities Services, THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO]. [Another contact: David Guyer, Assistant Director, Office of Community Affairs, University of Chicago, 773 834-4549.]
Take a stroll through the Winter Garden. About the Linne (Linneus) sculpture, above. ( Original information is not handy at this time; Park District's Julia Bachrach or the Art Institute's Ferguson Fund or tour books on outdoor and sculptural Chicago should have it.) By Johan Dyfverman. That here is a replica of his at the Royal Gardens in Stockholm. This replica was relocated from Lincoln Park to the Midway in 1976, because, this author was told, it was subject to vandalism and much of the Swedish population had moved from the vicinity. Relocation was perhaps requested by Swedish organizations, perhaps as a Swedish-American contribution to the U.S. Bicentennial: Vin Linneus belonged to the 18th Century and was a fountainhead of the Enlightenment. Certainly the move had their consent because a large ceremony was held on April 19, 1976 presided over by the King of Sweden, Karl XVI Gustave, and Mayor Daley. Since Linneus was the founder of modern taxonomy and plant nomenclature, it is appropriate that this fine bronze casting and its plinth be located at a great university and become the center of a garden, especially one devoted to reading and enjoyment of winter and summer plants in the midst of the city.
The garden's concept, refreshing people, is 19th century while its design blends turn of the 20th century City Beautiful formalism with curving informality that regained popularity as the 20th century advanced. The garden is supposed to be zeriscapic--using only natural rain--but in 2003 is was continually soaked by the sprinkler system. There were also some problems with pine die-off, corrected by replanting. Olin Partners and Wolff-Clements have a 5-year maintenance contract. Unfortunately, the Park District will not put sprinkling systems in plantings beds.
The district with U of C is designing a second winter garden.This will be located south of the current one [on a south panel] and will have trees, shrubs, and ornamental grasses that keep beauty through the winter. The University helped foot the $1.6 million bill for the first Winter Garden and $4 million skating rink.
In line with the Midway Framework Plan, the next project to be installed is the south winter garden. Also being planned by consultants under a planning grant, is a Children's Interactive Play and Learning Garden, to be located between the Metra/Canadian National tracks and Stony Island Avenue, east of which, just in Jackson Park, is the Perennial Garden. Major concepts for later ("funding opportunities") include a demonstration and community horticultural center, redecorated Metra viaducts, and redecorated cross streets which will suggest the Venetian canal originally envisioned for the Midway by its designer, Frederick Law Olmsted. Just to the west of the Midway in Washington Park is the restored Fountain of Time (1920s) (see pictures in Washington Park) and the Allison Davis Garden (under construction and contract for joint management by the University and the Park District). A large part of the western sunken panels were given drainage (with plans to continue in the central panels this year), raised slightly, and returfed (with limited success) , and the banks planted with tens of thousands of bulbs that should bloom this spring. Landscaping at the skating rink is lovely.
Picture:
Sculpture The Blanik Mountain Knight by Alban Polasek,
cast 1949, installed here May 29, 1955. This Sculpture honors Tomas
Masaryk (1850-1937), Czech fighter, author, and diplomat, the first
president of Czechoslovakia (created after the First World War), who taught
briefly at the University in 1902 and 1908. In legend, the knights sleep under
Mt. Blanik in Bohemia, waiting to follow St. Wenceslaus into battle in country's
hour of need. Thomas' son Jan Masaryk worked in Chicago 1907-13; as foreign
minister in 1939 he was thrown out a window or chose to kill himself during
the Communist coup of 1949. Czechoslovakia's 2nd president, Edward Benes, lectured
at U of C in 1939 after the German takeover.
The sculpture stands at the east end of the main Midway, just west of the Metra
tracks at Blackstone Avenue. This area was to have been site of a companion
(Creation? Rising Sun?) to Lorado Taft's Fountain of Time just beyond the west
end of the Midway. A reflecting pool has more recently been suggested in the
Framework Plan process for in front of the platform and pedestal--and some propose
a dog walk behind it!
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Enjoying the last day of ice skating, 2003. In background: the Warming House/Midway Center (field house) headquarters. Light food, including pizza, is available. There was skating on the Midway almost from the time it opened. January 9, 1957 Hyde Parkers complained to the Park District about the lack of a formal rink on the Midway. Starting in the 70s? the University of the city would flood the panel east of Ellis in cold weather for skating. In the 90s there was a "temporary" rink that left the panel west of Woodlawn in unusable shape each year and whose refrigeration was very messy an noisy. By the late 90s, the University and Park District started planning for a permanent structure with a winter-refrigerated rink and a warming house/park fieldhouse. This opened in 2001.
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Seasonal recreational programs and camps at the Center will be presented here and are available at the park district site, by picking up the quarterly regional &PLAY (see what else is available even at a distance), or calling or e-mailing the Center as at top of page. Wider context: Recreation Directory. A description of a night on the Rink with background context. Spring camp is at Nichols- see schedule there. Summer camp registrations are being taken now and filling up- 3 week-long sessions in August- see below.
Ice skating schedule 312 747-0233.
312 745-2470 or 312 741-PLAY. Schedule:
Free Public skate M-Th 12-7 pm. Fri 12-4:30?
Fee Public skate Fri 5-7, Sat 1-9, Sun 12-7.
Lessons ($50) Jan. section, Feb. section. Sat 12-2, Sun 12-1, Mon 4-5.
Rat Hockey M and W 7-9 $5.
Midweek @ The Midway watch for it again in summer, 2008.
Tentative schedule
Midweek @ the Midway - Wednesdays, movies at dusk, concerts c. 7:30 pm. 1130 E. Midway Plaisance (middle panel between Woodlawn and Ellis), 312 745-2470. Movie unless says "concert" .
Register for camps, etc. online at www.chicagoparkdistrict.com, or in person.
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