Pritzker Park, Chicago
[Pritzker Park (2009) Hoerr Schaudt, landscape architects /Image & Artwork: designslinger]
In the mid-1980s the city of Chicago was looking for a place to house all the books of the city's main library. Architects Shepley, Rutan & Coolidge's 1897 building was out-of-date, stuffed to the rafters, and the library needed more room. After years of "temporary" housing, and thoughts of converting an old department store into the library, a plan was finally approved to build a brand new building at the southern end of the city's State Street retail corridor. A stretch of the street that was kind of forlorn and forgotten.
[Pritzker Park, 344 S. State Street, Chicago /Image & Artwork: designslinger]
Once anchored by the Goldblatt's and Sears flagship department stores, by 1987 both buildings were standing tall but empty. The city owned a piece of property directly across the street from the Sears building, and after years of discussion and lots of book shuffling, decided that's where the main library building would be built. However, if the urban renewal project was going to be truly successful something would also have to be done with the block just to the north, across Van Buren Street. Once the site of architect's Marshall & Fox's Rialto Theatre, only the Rialto name survived, now painted on a signboard above the doorway of one of the transient hotels on the block. In order to get rid of the hotels and the down-and-out retail establishments along State, the city used their powers of eminent domain to purchase the property and then demolish all of the buildings. This way the site would be ready and available for future commercial development, a nice accompaniment to their $150 million investment in the new library building, and the future success of South State Street.
[Pritzker Park, Chicago /Image & Artwork: designslinger]
Some members of the library board thought that a small park would be a much better compliment to the future library, and although there were some powerful forces working against them, the park advocates won. In 2008 the city turned over the small patch of green to the Chicago Park District who hired landscape architects Hoerr Schaudt to re-imagine the corner and provide space for large-scale, temporary art installations as well as the usual grass, trees and flowers. The park was named for Cindy Pritzker, a member and former President of the library board who played a major roll in raising millions of dollars for Chicago's public library system.
[Eye, Tony Tasset, artist, Pritzker Park /Image & Artwork: designslinger]
Last summer Tony Tasset's Eye was under construction in the plaza intended for such public displays of art. Working with the Park District, the Chicago Loop Alliance helped raise funds and coordinate the installation of Tasset's overscaled replica of his own eye, and Pritzker Park was launched.
See the former Goldblatt's and Sears stores at: Three R's - Rothschild, Renovation & Reuse, and A Flexible Structure, and the original home of the main branch of the Chicago Public Library at: Culturally Centered.
Posted by designslinger at 6/14/2011 4:28 AM 
Categories: Art, Architects, Urban Planning, Gardens
Tags: Hoerr Schaudt Chicago Loop State Street
Categories: Art, Architects, Urban Planning, Gardens
Tags: Hoerr Schaudt Chicago Loop State Street
Although I appreciate the bit of green, I kind of wish they had gone ahead with a building. After all, Grant Park is only a block away...
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Couldn't agree more. This park has always seemed like an afterthought. It looked it in the 90s, and still does today.
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I remember reading about these 'pocket parks' and the idea behind them back in the mid-to-late 1960s, when Horizon magazine was still a hardbound quarterly with occasional essays on urbanology by Lewis Mumford. Reston, Va was brand new then, and the thought was that if we could refashion urban areas we could thereby both transform urban life and thereby tilt society itself into a more progressive mindset, as if rethinking our homes and environments alone would suddenly make humanity as a whole grow up and stop being irresponsible. My, what heady thoughts floated about back then, when it seemed the whole world was young ... but we were, of course, stupid and naive to think that merely changing housing would transform human attitudes, just as we were dumb enough to think that just singing about peace and justice would actually accomplish it (and not hard work, which is at the core of nearly everything worthwhile).
I stopped getting Horizon magazine somewhere halfway into my 20s and never forgot those stories about urban planning and urban sociology; but I've yet to see enough of those ideas applied to bear fruit worth noticing. You'd think someone besides the planners of Reston would have tried it somewhere by now. As for Reston? It's a very pleasant bedroom community of D.C. right now, but still just a feeder suburb for the real work that happens in the urban heart of the nation's capital ... and I'm not sure it's proven all that much, other than that suburbanites can get by far more often without their cars than they thought. But the town's still surrounded by places you still have to drive to to reach. so what changed, really?
Pocket parks, on the other hand, have had a modest positive effect wherever they've been tried, but their goals were more modest to start: a bit of greenery to review the visual stress of all that concrete and steel, a patch of lawn and trees to provide a bit of oxygen and shade and absorb rain runoff better than sewers can, a wisp of nature to provide a moment's peace, solace, or the joy of a mini-riot of blooms that prompts a smile. All this is worthy in and of itself; and if it makes us more sane in addition to providing flora that absorb ran rather than letting it flood streets, that's a bonus. the new water-permeable asphalt that's been developed won't be replacing huge swaths of pavement any time soon, so green areas are all we have to absorb rain and prevent basements and backyards from flooding and dirty, untreated water from going back to the rivers and lakes. And their seating allows people to gather, relax, commune, and make the city more friendly. So many positives.
Give me a pocket park any day: they're worth their weight in gold.
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Bravo to that!
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