Sherman Park

Sherman Park is a 60.6-acre public park on Chicago's South Side, laid out between 1904 and 1907 as one of the South Park Commission's first neighborhood parks. The site was low, swampy ground near the stockyards. The Olmsted Brothers reshaped it into rolling earthworks, a lagoon and islands, with an informal landscape across the southern two-thirds. The northern third is formal and holds the recreation buildings designed by Edward Bennett of D.H. Burnham and Company. These include men's and women's gymnasiums, locker buildings and a fieldhouse built of cast "marblecrete" with Palladian openings and terra cotta details. The park was listed for its role in the Progressive Reform movement, which brought playgrounds, bathing facilities, athletic space and a library into working neighborhoods, and for the collaboration between the two design firms. Later changes include the loss of pergolas and the original office building, replacement of roofing, and added playgrounds and courts, but the overall design remains legible.