MUDD 21 - City Visions II
Obama Presidential Center, Chicago
Chicago Open Space, Street Hierarchy and Challenges
In order to understand the relationship of the South Side neighborhoods of Washington Park and Woodlawn to the overall urban form of the city an analysis was undertaken of two major elements that define the urban morphology of Chicago in its lakefront location on the shore of Lake Michigan, (1) the location and extent of open space; and (2) the street hierarchy of mile and half mile streets. The open space system within the City of Chicago has a long and distinguished history, comprising a network of green space protecting the natural assets of its all-important location on the watershed of the Mississippi River and the Great Lakes/ St Laurence River systems of the North American continent. In addition, since the nineteenth century, the Chicago park system has been conceived as a driver of urban development, increasing land values along its borders. This was a central aim of the South Park System designed in 1871 by Frederick Law Olmsted (1822-1903) and Calvert Vaux (1824-1895). With the 200 ha Jackson Park on the lakefront and 150 ha Washington Park on former prairie lands inland linked by the wide Midway Plaisance, the South Park System stimulated the growth of elegant residential districts in surrounding urban tracts in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Jackson Park and the Midway Plaisance also gained distinction as the site of the World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893, and the Midway Plaisance has been the centerpiece of the University of Chicago campus since the 1890s. Chicago’s related network of wide, tree-lined boulevards extends beyond Washington Park to connect the South Park System to the West Park System and beyond to Lincoln Park on the lakefront north of The Loop. Garfield Boulevard, Washington Park is the first section of this network threaded through the great grid of the city plan. The Chicago grid, progressively laid out from 1830, conforms in its compelling geometry to the survey requirements of the 1785 U.S. Land Ordinance, conceived by Thomas Jefferson as the means of ordering settlement west of Ohio on the basis of ‘townships’ six miles square, with each square mile divided into quarter sections. In today’s City of Chicago, the pure form of the grid is inflected in places by natural features, the open space system, non-conforming infrastructure and non-conforming spatial development. The result is a hierarchy of grid streets determined by the extent to which they are uninterrupted. ‘Mile Streets’ are those located one mile apart that run uninterrupted north-south and east-west through the city. ‘Half Mile Streets’ are those located within the grid of Mile Streets interrupted along their length, but surviving as discontinuous elements. The MUDD21 Studio mapped the open space system and boulevards, mile streets and half mile streets within the City of Chicago, overlaid on a satellite image of surrounding Cook County to indicate the continuity of these elements beyond the city limits. This graphic investigation was inspired by a
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presentation at SOM by Benet Haller, Director of Urban Design & Planning, City of Chicago. The result highlights the importance of the Mile Streets that run through the study area. There are three north-south streets – Martin Luther King Drive, Washington Park; Cottage Grove Avenue, Woodlawn; and Stony Island Avenue, Jackson Park – that seem to project the energy of The Loop straight through the South Side neighborhoods. There is one east-west street – 63rd Street – that once had a continuous commercial frontage but today is ‘hollowed out’ with vacant lots and abandoned buildings for many blocks along its length. The graphic study also shows the significance of the Half Mile Streets, which don’t carry as much traffic as the Mile Streets. First, east-west 51st Street with the potential to have a cross-street relationship with key institutions, such as Provident Hospital, the first African American owned and operated hospital in the U.S., and Walter H. Dyett High School, named for the High School music teacher of many great jazz musicians from the South Side, and recently saved from closure by concerted community action. Second, north-south South Dorchester Avenue, which runs from The Midway to 63rd Street in Woodlawn and has the potential to be the key connector between the University of Chicago campus and the East Woodlawn community. The open space and boulevard study highlighted the significance of sites overlooking the Olmsted-designed South Park System, the importance of the Midway Plaisance as a green link, and the related significance of the once-grand Garfield Boulevard, particularly at the landmark location of its intersection with the north-south Mile Street of Martin Luther King drive overlooking the central green space of Washington Park.
Mile streets
Mile and Half Mile streets