63rd Street Bathing Pavilion

“Having previously designed New York City's famed Central Park in 1858, the firm of Olmsted and Vaux was the nation's most influential landscape architectural firm at the time of their work on Jackson Park.”

“The Classical style, which received much of its design impetus from the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, was the architectural style favored by the South Park Commission during the early decades of the 20th century.”

“The 63rd Street Bathing Pavilion possesses excellent physical integrity, displaying through its site, scale and overall design, its historic relationship to the Woodlawn community. The most significant changes to the building have been the removal of its former lockers and changing rooms from the building's open courtyards; however, these changes are not visible from the exterior of the structure, and these changes are appropriate alterations in the furtherance of the continued use of the building.”

“PARK DEVELOPMENT IN CHICAGO Park development in Chicago displays a rich variety of traditions. In the first half of the nineteenth century, in an effort to provide a physical amenity for newly platted residential neighborhoods and to encourage sales, Chicago real estate developers set aside small tracts of land for parks in several neighborhoods intended for upper-income houses.”

“The first of these parks, Washington Square, was given to the City in 1842 by the American Land Company, which was subdividing the surrounding Near North Side area.”

“In the park's original plan of 1871, Olmsted and his partner, Calvert Vaux, conceived the park as the eastern division of a grand 1,055-acre landscape originally known as South Park.”

“(The material was also widely used for street lights, including the Park District's standard post top fixtures found throughout the parks.) Writing favorably of the material in a 1905 article, Henry Foreman, President of the Commission, noted that the material's surface finish of small particles of stone were visible, making the wall appear rough instead of “flat and meaningless." Because of the rough-cast character of the aggregate concrete, it required ornamental details be rendered in a simplified vocabulary, devoid of intricacies.”

“The 63rd Street Bathing Pavilion is distinguished for its quality of detailing and craftsmanship in the Classical style, especially its use of the Tuscan order, Classical pilasters, brackets, and balustrade.”

“During the early 1930s, the Fine Arts Palace from the 1983 fair was rehabilitated and converted into the Museum of Science and Industry. Its opening in 1933 coincided with Chicago's second world's fair, A Century of Progress, in nearby Burnham Park.”

“The 63rd Street Bathing Pavilion followed in this tradition. The in-house architectural staff of the South Park Commission was responsible for the design of the bathing pavilion, their design influenced by the Classical work of Daniel H. Burnham who had been in charge of architectural planning of the World's Columbian Exposition.”