Day 57: The Midway

     If you've been keeping up with this blog, by now you know the story about how Paul Cornell found the area south of the city lacking in the 1850s and decided to petition the state to create a park there.  You know about the South Park Commission, and how it was created in 1869 to administer the more than 1,000 acres that were set aside.  You even know that there were two separate parks carved out of the land, Washington Park and Jackson Park.  But here's something you don't know.  There's a third park in the mix.

     When the land was partitioned, Washington Park was on the western side of the plot, while Jackson Park was bordering the lake.  Connecting those two parks was a mile-long strip of land that today is known as the Midway Plaisance.  Originally Frederick Law Olmstead desired for the park to serve as part of a chain of lakes, which would allow people to boat all the way from Washington Park, through the Midway, and all the way through Jackson Park straight into the lake.  To accomplish this feat, Olmstead wanted to have a canal running through the Plaisance, thus a trench was dug through the park.  Even though the canal idea fell through, the trench remained, though it has never been filled in with water to this day.

     After the initial design phase, the 1893 World's Fair came to town, and the Midway became the main thoroughfare of the Fair, introducing the westernized version of the belly dance, among other things.  Also located on the Midway was the original Ferris Wheel, which made it's debut at the Fair.  In another legacy, the term midway became colloquially used as a term for the main area of games and amusements in a fair(due in no small part to the flurry of activity witnessed by the Plaisance).

     When the Fair ended, the Plaisance was restored to its former setting.  By 1926, the University of Chicago had absorbed the Midway, and ever since then has been the de facto authority in charge.  During that period of time, the U of C Maroons football team was playing in Stagg Field, just across the way from the Plaisance.  Because of this, the team was called the Monsters of the Midway in deference to the park.  To this day, the park remains an open-access green area.  And as for those trenches that Olmstead tried to put in?  Well, they now exist as soccer fields and other sporting areas.  So yes, 144 years after it was first formed, the South Park Commission's mission is going stronger than ever.