Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Did You Know?
The two bronze sculptures of Indian warriors on horseback that flank Con-
gress Parkway at Michigan Avenue were titled
The Bowman and The Spear-
man
by Yugoslavian sculptor Ivan Mestrovic. It appears as if their bow and
arrow and spear have been removed, but the omission is actually inten-
tional: Mestrovic aimed to make an antiwar statement.
Fun Fact
nicely spread out, a legacy of mail-order magnate Aaron Montgomery Ward's
fin
de siècle
campaign to limit municipal buildings in the park). Incredibly, the entire
expanse was created from sandbars, landfill, and Chicago Fire debris; the original
shoreline extended all the way to Michigan Avenue.
The immense
Buckingham Fountain,
accessible along Congress Parkway, is
the baroque centerpiece of the park, composed of pink Georgia marble and pat-
terned after—but twice the size of—the Latona Fountain at Versailles, with
adjoining esplanades beautified by rose gardens in season. From April through
October, the fountain spurts columns of water up to 150 feet in the air every
hour on the hour; beginning at 4pm, a whirl of colored lights and dramatic
music amps up the drama (the fountain shuts down at 11pm). Concession areas
and bathrooms are available on the plaza.
The northwest corner of Grant Park (bordered by Michigan Ave. and Randolph
St.) is the site of
Millennium Park,
one of the city's grandest recent public-works
projects. Who cares that the park cost hundreds of millions more than it was sup-
posed to, or the fact that it finally opened a full 4 years
after
the actual millennium?
It's a winning combination of beautiful landscaping, elegant architecture (the clas-
sically inspired Peristyle), and public entertainment spaces (the ice rink and the
music and dance theater). The park's centerpiece is the dramatic, Frank Gehry-
designed
Pritzker Music Pavilion,
featuring massive curved ribbons of steel. The
Grant Park Symphony Orchestra and Chorus stages a popular series of free out-
door classical music concerts here most Wednesday through Sunday evenings in
the summer. For a schedule of concert times and dates, contact the
Grant Park
Music Festival
(
&
312/742-7638
).
Through the summer, Grant Park is taken over by a variety of music and food
festivals. Annual events that draw big crowds include a blues music festival (in
June) and a jazz festival (Labor Day). The
Taste of Chicago
(
&
312/744-3315
),
purportedly the largest food festival in the world (the city estimates its annual
attendance at around 3
1
⁄
2
million), takes place every summer for 10 days around
the July 4th holiday. Local restaurants serve up more ribs, pizza, hot dogs, and
beer than you'd ever want to see, let alone eat. (See chapter 3 for a comprehen-
sive listing of summer events in Grant Park.)
Scattered about the park are a number of sculptures and monuments, includ-
ing the heroic sculptures of two Native Americans on horseback entitled
The
Bowman and The Spearman
(at Congress Pkwy. and Michigan Ave.), which has
become the park's trademark since it was installed in 1928, as well as likenesses
of Copernicus, Columbus, and Lincoln, the latter by the great American sculp-
tor Augustus Saint-Gaudens, located on Congress Parkway between Michigan
Avenue and Columbus Drive. On the western edge of the park, at Adams Street,
is the
Art Institute
(see above), and at the southern tip, in the area known as the
Museum Campus, are the Field Museum of Natural History, the Adler Plane-
tarium, and the Shedd Aquarium (see below for all three).
