Midway Plaisance Master Plan Chicago, Illinois University of Chicago, Chicago Park District

The Midway Plaisance is an historic landscape designed seeks to maintain existing uses and respects the historic by Frederick Law Olmsted after the 1893 Columbian landscape design and fabric of existing trees. Significant new Exposition. Originally intended to connect Washington uses and amenities were also proposed for the Midway. Park to Jackson Park and Lake Michigan, the Midway had These include a permanent skating rink and warming hut; become a divider between the University of Chicago and all-season gardens north and south of the skating rink; Hyde Park communities to the north, and the Woodlawn traffic-calming and other pedestrian improvements; a new community to the south. reader’s garden; an urban horticultural center, including demonstration gardens, greenhouses, and multi-purpose Almost a mile long east to west, it was also perceived to be space; and a children’s garden. wide and unsafe in the north/south direction, and therefore acted as a barrier to university staff and students going north Wolff Landscape Architecture, Inc. worked with The Olin and south across the Midway. The single largest existing Partnership of Philadelphia, who were the prime consultant use is sports, but this use is not balanced by passive uses or for the project. The Midway Plaisance Master Plan received other non-athletic improvements. The landscape architects, an Illinois Chapter American Society of Landscape Architects in response to these issues, developed a master plan which Merit Award in 2000.

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