Riis, Jacob A., Park

Jacob A. Riis Park occupies 56.84 acres on Chicago's northwest side. The land was bought in 1916 and named for the reformer, journalist and author Jacob A. Riis, but little was built until 1928. Residents petitioned for years for a fieldhouse, ball fields and other facilities. Walter W. Ahlschlager designed the red brick fieldhouse, completed in 1929, which combines Georgian Revival and French Renaissance elements. After Chicago's park commissions merged into the Chicago Park District in 1934, Works Progress Administration funds paid for a comfort station, swimming pool and pool house, pergola, service building, tennis courts and a running track. Alfred Caldwell designed the western half as a naturalistic landscape of meadows, a limestone-edged lagoon and a wall of trees called Crabapple Lane, set along an ancient glacial shoreline ridge. The activity-oriented eastern half and the wooded western half remain largely as planned. A boulder monument to Riis, in place by 1932, also contributes to the district.