USA > Illinois > Cook County > Chicago > Historical review of Chicago and Cook county and selected biography, Volume I > Part 22
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charge of the original St. Philip's parish there were about one hun- dred families within his jurisdiction; now there are 700, and from a small parochial school has been developed an educational institution attended by nearly one thousand pupils of both sexes. Father Mc- Donnell has two earnest and capable priests to assist him in his pas- toral labors.
Rev. M. O'Sullivan, P. R., who is the worthy and able pastor of St. Bridget's church, on Archer avenue corner of Church street, was
MICHAEL born in Sneem, County Kerry, Ireland. He obtained
O'SULLIVAN. his higher education in St. John's College, Water-
ford, and in 1886, while still a resident of the mother country, was ordained to the priesthood of the Roman Catholic church.
In August of the same year Father O'Sullivan came direct to Chicago, first serving as assistant in the organization which finally developed into the flourishing church of St. Mel's, Washington boule- vard and Forty-third avenue. During the following three years and a half he held the same position in St. Pius' church and was then transferred to the Church of the Nativity, located at Thirty-seventh street and Union avenue. A faithful and useful service of nearly four years in that capacity was followed by a change of priestly duties to St. Patrick's church, Lemont, Cook county, Illinois. He found this a spiritual field almost uncultivated by his church, but the six years of his pastorate in that locality produced radical changes. Through his efforts and substantial labors he organized the scat- tered members of his faith, raised the necessary funds and erected a handsome Gothic church. His work there was so noticeable that in 1900 he was transferred after a competitive examination to the more metropolitan field of St. Bridget's parish, Chicago. There he has also erected both a church and school, his pastorate now embracing about a thousand families. The school, which is attended by some twelve hundred pupils, is under the direct supervision of the twenty- four Sisters of Charity, while Father O'Sullivan is also assisted in his pastoral work by two priests, Rev. Joseph Fitzgerald and Rev. James Grace.
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Rev. Innocent A. Kestl (or Khestl), pastor of the Church of Our Lady of Good Counsel, located on North Western avenue near Cor-
INNOCENT A. nelia street, presides over a flourishing Catholic par-
KESTL.
ish of Bohemians. His education and training have well fitted him for his responsibilities.
Father Kestl was born on the 24th of June, 1878, at Frycovice, Moravia, this district of Austria-Hungary being a crownland of the dual empire lying to the east of Bohemia. His parents are Innocent and Maria (Huvar) Kestl, his father being an honest, industrious cabinet maker. The son, who had a strong and early desire to enter the priesthood of the Catholic church, obtained a thorough education preparatory to the pursuit of a theological course. This preliminary training included courses in the grammar school of Tichà , the high school of Frankstadt and the gymnasium of Valasske Mezirici. After his graduation from the last named institution in 1899, he entered the Priests' Seminary at Olomouc, and in 1903 completed his theo- logical and churchly training there and was initiated into the orders of Catholicism.
Father Kestl spent the first three years of his service for the church in Moravia, as follows: Assistant priest in Veseli ; administrator in a rectory at Jestrabice, and assistant again at Veseli. In 1906 he was sent to the United States as assistant priest to a church in Cleveland, Ohio, and in 1907 was appointed pastor of his present charge. As he has spent virtually all his life in a country which has a large Bo- hemian population, he has a thorough understanding of the people in his adopted city amidst whom his pastoral work is conducted, and he is therefore accomplishing broad and practical results.
Rev. Daniel Croke, pastor of St. Cecelia's church, corner of West Forty-fifth street and Fifth avenue, is a stanch member of the Cath- olic clergy who has lately returned to the local field
DANIEL
CROKE. which he first entered more than twenty-one years
ago. In Ireland he was born, educated and ordained to the priesthood, and in' 1887, soon after attaining holy orders, he left the mother country for Chicago.
Father Croke's first four years in this city were spent as assistant pastor in St. James' church, on Wabash avenue and Twenty-ninth street, and he fulfilled the duties of that position until 1891, when he was transferred to St. Elizabeth's church, on the corner of Wabash
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avenue and Forty-first street. In 1899 he was appointed pastor of St. Mary's church at Freeport, Illinois, doing most useful work for the parish and the church for a period of eight years. He was re- called to Chicago in October, 1907, and assumed charge of the im- portant parish of St. Cecelia's. Within his pastorate reside 800 Cath- olic families, the parochial school numbers 800 pupils, and he is as- sisted in his work by two priests and fifteen Sisters of Charity.
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The Dark Systems
The municipality, or local government, corresponds to the hear: of the human organism, and any areas which are reserved against the encroachment of congested districts may be likened to its lungs through which the populace may imbibe life-giving oxygen and revive its depressed or flagging spirits. The establishment of a grand sys- tem of pleasure grounds goes far toward allaying the discontent of the mass of city toilers whose home surroundings are often unlovely and sometimes unsanitary. The work is therefore in the line of good municipal policy, as well as of high humanity. To provide free, health- ful, attractive recreation is to keep thousands out of the jails, work houses and hospitals. A vast, growing city must have great lungs, or everything in time will go wrong, and in this matter Chicago has looked far and wisely into the future. Her lungs are not only great, as befits an American metropolis, but space is about to be provided for a vaster set of vital organs in preparation for the founding of a world's city. The inner belt of parks and boulevards is already being perfected for the great city, and the outer belt is the future develop- ment to accommodate the Greater Chicago when it shall absorb its outlying suburbs and cities for a dozen miles north, west and south.
The park areas of Chicago actually improved and thrown open to the public amount to about 3,200 acres, whereas the dream of the future is to provide 37,000 acres of freedom for every man, woman and child who chooses to take advantage of the city's generosity and wisdom. The nucleus of the projected system is Grant Park, more popularly known as the Lake Front. In a future not far distant it is anticipated that not only the Art Institute, but the Field Columbian Museum and the Crerar Library will have their sites therein, and with the great Public Library across Michigan boulevard, will form a cluster of architectural gems well worthy this crown of the city parks. In the words of Henry G. Foreman, former president of the South Park Commissioners and the Outer Belt Park Commission : "Grant Park is the axis of the inner and onter belt of parks and boule- vards. From it as a hub the system expands in the form of a half
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wheel. The diagonal city streets are the spokes; the inner belt of the parks and boulevards is the support of the spokes; the outer belt of preserves and parkways is the tire; and the inner and outer systems are merged into the broad shore boulevard. All parts of the great recreation area are accessible quickly by transportation lines at low fares. When this system is a reality, Chicago will take its place at the head of American cities in park area and applied facilities. It will then be the Paris of America for artistic attractiveness."
It is an interesting fact of local history that Chicago's park sys- tem should have had its origin in the locality which is now prophesied as the coming nucleus of its cosmopolitan development in this line; for the year after Chicago became a city, seventy years ago, it set aside a little square which is now the site of the Public Library and which it christened Dearborn Park. For two decades after 1839 the municipality made no attempt to create a system of parks, but set off small areas for the several divisions of the city, such as Washington square on the north side, Vernon, Wicker, Jefferson and Union parks on the west side, and Douglas Monument, Woodland and Groveland parks on the south side. These small, unconnected breathing spots ranged from Douglas (now Douglas Monument Square) at the foot of Thirty-fifth street, on the south side, to Washington Square (now opposite the Newberry library), on the north side, Wicker park on the northwest side (north Robey street), and Jefferson (west Monroe and Loomis) and Union (Ashland boulevard and Warren avenue), on the west side. These gathering places for tired people and pick- nickers were then in the outlying districts of the city ; in a word, "out in the country." Dearborn Park was the down-town pleasure ground and a favorite gathering place for out-of-door meetings, such as were organized for political and war purposes.
It was not until 1869 that the citizens of the three territorial di- visions of the municipality joined issues on the park question and worked together to establish a system, with boulevards as pulmonary tubes connecting larger and more elaborately improved parks. Under a legislative act of that year park districts and commissioners were created for the north, south and west sides. The first board of com- missioners for the north division of the city consisted of E. B. Mc- Cagg, John B. Turner, Andrew Nelson, Joseph Stockton and Jacob Rehm. They were to serve for five years, their successors to be ap-
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pointed by the circuit judge of Cook county. For about four years the city had been expending ten or fifteen thousand dollars annually on the improvements of Lincoln Park. Chicago had owned the south 120 acres of the 562 acres now embraced in the system, since 1840, and after using it as a cemetery for more than a quarter of a century. the residence district had so encroached upon the grounds that burials therein were prohibited as a sanitary measure. In 1865 the north half of the Chicago cemetery had been reserved for public uses, the tract being named Lincoln Park in July of that year; in the following year all burials in the south half of the city property were prohibited ; in 1868 Lincoln Park was thrown open to the public, and when the legislative act of February 8, 1869, creating the boards of park com- missioners, was passed, about $70,000 had been expended on Lincoln Park. It is therefore the pioneer of the established system of Chicago parks and boulevards. Extending from North avenue to Diversey boulevard, a distance of a mile and a half, with North Clark street as its western boundary and Lake Michigan as its eastern, it is a grand tract devoted to the comfort, recreation, refreshment and education of one of the most thickly settled sections of the city. A fine zoological garden, a large museum of natural history, a magnificent conserva- tory of flowers and ferns, beautiful statuary scattered over acres of grass plots and wooded land, lily ponds, lagoons for boating, a noble stretch of water near the lake front for expert rowers, bathing beaches, a yacht harbor, baseball grounds, tennis courts, and a score of other attractions and facilities for rest, exercise and improvement, have given Lincoln Park a popularity and a public usefulness not to be measured by dollars and cents. The extensions of its area lakeward and the improvements of its magnificent water front, with the additions to its northern sections have been mainly accomplished since 1902.
The truth that the parks are for the people, to be used by them in the most practical sense of the word, is nowhere better illustrated than by the management of the Lincoln Park system, as expressed by Francis T. Simmons, president of the board of commissioners: "Its available area being only a little over three hundred acres is taxed to its utmost capacity, especially on holidays and the pleasant Sundays of the summer; 100,000 to 120,000 visitors on such days are not at all infrequent, and it became very evident that something had to be done to afford greater facilities for the ever-increasing population. Vol. I-15.
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The board in 1902 began looking about to accomplish this end and, as the submerged shallows of Lake Michigan were theirs and lay temptingly within reach, it was not far to the decision that an addi- tion could be accomplished by filling them in, and it was decided to thus increase the park area by over two hundred acres. A survey was made of the shore lying immediately north of the present park and a plat made of the proposed extension, which at that time was entirely submerged by the lake. To effect this a system of dikes and breakwaters running along the outer boundaries was projected, which, when completed, would hold and retain the material which would be taken from the lake for filling up to grade this large area. Steps rapidly followed each other in gaining the necessary legislative action -the issuing of bonds and the projection of the work. If Lincoln Park was required simply to take care of its local population, or the population lying contiguous and naturally tributary to it, the prob- lems which today are forcing themselves upon the board would be very much simplified and lessened, but this park (fortunate in one sense and unfortunate in another) contains drawing features. It contains the only zoological garden in the city, which in its scope and wide and comprehensive selection of specimens, attracts the visitor from all parts of the city, as well as from the country at large. Being immediately upon the lake, makes it a Mecca for Chicago people in the hot and oppressive days of the summer. Its extensive shade and free lawns make it an almost universal picnic ground. Probably nothing would strike the European visitor more forcibly than the free and unrestricted use of the lawns. The 'Keep Off the Grass' signs which are so constantly in evidence in European parks and which are so objectionable and forbidding, are not found here. Nothing could be more gratifying to the settlement worker, the philanthropist and the social economist than the sight of groups of families-almost innumerable- with their luncheons and other comforts, that dot the lawn stretches of Lincoln Park.
"The writer accompanied the late Admiral Taylor to the park on an evening of a hot Sunday. Upon entering the park the writer was horrified beyond expression to see that it was littered with news- papers, lunch baskets and other evidences of vanished feasts. He said to the Admiral, 'By 9 o'clock tomorrow morning I could show you the park with a clean face. I regret its appearance exceedingly.'
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"The Admiral replied, 'I think I have never seen anything more gratifying than what I see here. It shows me beyond question that this park is serving well its purpose for the people-they use it.' This remark proved the Admiral a member of the 'great democracy.' which must count in its ranks all park boards who fulfil well their duty to the public."
The feature of Lincoln Park which gives it an especial nobility is its lake front, the improvements of which have been progressing for more than twenty years. Commencing as a simple breakwater at Bellevue place in 1886, it now embraces a vast sweep of massive sea walls, granite paved beach, broad drives, bathing beaches, lagoons, promenades, sloping swards, wide lawn stretches, flower gardens, no- ble boulevards and carriages and automobiles, speeding tracks for equestrians, bordered on the one side by the cool blue waters of the lake and on the other by a continuous array of green foliage. This is the panorama for a mile and a half.
Lincoln Park is also rich in statuary. Near the Dearborn avenue entrance is the massive memorial to Abraham Lincoln. This im- pressive monument was created from the munificence of the late Eli Bates, who, in 1887, bequeathed $40,000 for the purpose. The year before the heroic figure of Schiller was unveiled, under the auspices of the German-American Society of Chicago, and in 1891 the Swedes of the city and all those who delight in the beauties and mysteries of plant life saw with gratification the addition of Linnaeus to the statti- ary of the park. As the result of a popular subscription, in which 100,000 people participated, Grant, the great and magnanimous war- rior, sternly overlooks the waters of Lake Michigan from the back of his speaking steed. More than 200,000 people gave their presence to the unveiling of this great work in October, 1891. The statue of Shakespeare took its place among these out-door works of art in 1894, and in the same year Lambert Tree made the second of his gifts of statuary to Lincoln Park, in the shape of the Indian warrior hold- ing aloft his feathered staff as "A Signal of Peace." His first dona- tion had been the heroic bronze statue of La Salle. "A Signal of Peace" is a striking contrast to the "Alarm," an Indian group of four figures, representing a gift from Martin Ryerson. The electric foun- tain, one of the magnificent attractions of Lincoln Park, was pre- sented to the city by the late Charles T. Yerkes in 1890. The mas-
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sive Academy of Sciences, which stands at the main entrance to the park fronting Clark street, was completed in 1893, and contains fully 250,000 specimens of natural history. Its collections of mollusks and of local specimens are especially complete. It may be added that the lily pond in Lincoln Park, an acre and a half in extent, is one of the largest in the world, and that the zoological garden contains some 1,200 animals.
The district controlled by the Lincoln Park commissioners com- prises the towns of North Chicago and Lake View,. or nearly sixteen square miles, and embraces a population of nearly half a million peo- ple. The board has more than $393,000 available for the purchase of small parks, and several have already been established and improved. at a cost of over $106,000 as virtual accessories to social settlement work. One of these, the Chicago Avenue Park, comprises over nine acres between the pumping works and the lake and contains a shelter house, refectory, gymnasium and playground for children. The Elm street playground, some distance to the west, is much smaller, but provided with the same conveniences for the mothers and children of the poor. The original fund, created for these purposes, was $500,000. In this connection mention is also due of the Lincoln Park Sanitarium for children (supported by the Chicago Daily News), which is situated on the lake shore in the park proper and for years has been doing a useful work for the little ones of the poor. The principal funds available for the various improvements at Lincoln Park were as follows: Park extension, $1,000,000; old shore pro- tection, $203,000 ; small parks, $500,000. The expenditures on ac- count of these funds have been: Small parks, $106,000 (as stated) ; old shore protection, $203,000 ; park extension, $642,000. The total available funds amount to $1,103,531.
Under the legislative act of February, 1869, the governor appoint- ed John M. Wilson, Chauncey Bowen, George W. Gage, L. B. Sidway and Paul Cornell as the first commissioners of the South Park system. It is evident that these citizens saw further into the future needs of Chicago in the way of generous lungs to provide for her phenomenal expansion than the commissioners for either the north or the west sides; for bonds to the amount of $2,000,000 were at once floated and with their proceeds 1,500 acres of land were purchased-the fu- ture sites of Washington and Jackson parks, with their connecting
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Midway Plaisance. The entire South Park system is now less than 1,900 acres. The projection of so stupendous a plan naturally aroused a feeling of considerable skepticism, and in the laying of its simple groundwork the early boards of commissioners encountered discour- aging obstacles, but which by no means deterred them in their defin- ite advance. Six miles from the city hall, Washington Park, the nearest of the public reserves, was first taken in hand. It was largely an unlovely swamp, and the work of reclaiming it and laying out the grounds in general lines had only fairly begun when the great fire of 1871 created a suspension of all work for about a year. In 1872 improvements were resumed, but the development of both Wash- ington and Jackson parks was delayed for several years on account of the unreasonable prices demanded by owners whose property had been condemned and by the difficulty of enforcing the taxes and special assessments required for the prosecution of the work. But by the close of the seventies more than one thousand acres had been improved in both parks and by 1884 all the floating indebtedness over the South Park system had been paid. At that time the total amount expended for the purchase of land had been $3,277,846.91, and for interest on bonds and land contracts $1,723,553.08. By the early eighties Washington Park (long known as West Park) had as- sumed the features which give it special prominence now. A number of greenhouses had been erected and the botanical gardens of Wash- ington, as well as those of the old world, had made generous contribu- tions toward the establishment of a similar attraction for Washington Park. For years this Chicago pleasure ground has been noted for its superb and unique floral displays outside its magnificent conserva- tory. Its entire area had been tilled, seeded or planted to forest trees, about one hundred acres known as "the south open green," having been reserved as a superb lawn, then, as now, one of the largest and most beautiful in the country. Although the rough lines of this fea- ture were fixed thus early, in 1890 this noble meadow was subjected to a vigorous course of plowing, draining, re-seeding and rolling, and has been in course of renewal or improvement ever since. The Ram- ble, with its winding walks over artificial hills and ravines, through thickets and across bright open spots, is in direct contrast to the great common. Then there is the massive carriage house, built for the ac- commodation of the park horses and vehicles, which is a model of its
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kind, and near the large conservatory is a beautiful lily pond. Cro- quet courts, an archery range, horse speedway, fly casting accommo- dations, wading pool and sand court (for children) and a house to shelter lovers of the winter game of curling, are a few of the other attractions which place Washington in the list of the other demo- cratic parks of the city. It is 371 acres in extent, and is bounded on the north by Fifty-first street, east by Cottage Grove avenue, south by Sixtieth street, and west by South Park avenue.
The Midway Plaisance, connecting Washington and Jackson Park to the east, is bounded on the north by Fifty-ninth street, on the south by Sixtieth street, on the west by Cottage Grove avenue and on the east by Stony Island avenue. When the Midway was first projected it was planned that waterways should run between the drives, with a cascade, or lock at the Washington Park terminus. Owing to the large expense in constructing and beautifying the chan- nels, building bridges, etc., the project was abandoned; but with the establishment and splendid development of the University of Chicago along the borders of the Midway steps are now being taken to carry out the original plan and create a magnificent waterway for college regattas and pleasure boating.
The first decided improvement along the lake front of Jackson Park was completed in 1884, when the beach was paved from Fifty- sixth to Fifty-ninth streets and the breakwater was extended to a point about two hundred feet south of Sixty-third street, or within four blocks of the present southern limits. The northern boundary of this noble expanse of picturesque waters and green sward is Fifty- sixth street. Its western limits are marked by Stony Island avenue, and no park in the Chicago system better merits the term magnificent than Jackson. Its present distinctive features were fixed by the re- moulding of its entire surface to meet the practical and artistic de- mands of the World's Columbian Exposition. In 1892 the South Side Park commissioners turned over to the management of the World's Fair more than 666 acres, including the Midway Plaisance, and the transformations made during the coming year in Jackson Park are among the wonders of history. But while the Fine Arts (now the Field Columbian Museum) and the German buildings, with the quaint Japanese temples on the wooded island, and the stern little convent of La Rabida on the lake front, are all that remain of the
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