Millennium Park

Millennium Park was an idea of Richard M. Daley and is considered the most ambitious public architectural project for Chicago since the Columbian Exposition of 1893. The copyrighted Cloud Gate sculpture by Anish Kapoor, reflecting the skyline of Chicago at night Pritzker Pavilion by Frank Gehry is the centerpiece of Millennium Park. Night view of the Crown Fountain Chicago skyline view from a Millennium Park garden Day view of the Crown Fountain A corporate sponsor A Chicago Police Officer blocks pedestrian access to Millennium Park during Looptopia 2007 with Pritzker Pavilion visible in the background

Millennium Park is a prominent civic center of the City of Chicago in Illinois and an important landmark of the city's lakefront. A redeveloped section of Grant Park, the 24.5 acre (101,000 m²) landmark is bounded by Michigan Avenue and its Chicago Landmark Historic Michigan Boulevard District, East Randolph Street, Columbus Drive and East Monroe Drive. It was Mayor of Chicago Richard M. Daley's ambitious idea to realize that which was originally designed as part of Daniel Burnham's Plan of Chicago, a plan for the future of Chicago created in 1909. It is historically the site of the Chicago Cubs' (then known as the White Stockings) first home field in 1871, Union Base-Ball Grounds. Planning began in October 1997, construction began in October 1998 and it was finally completed in July 2004. Millennium Park was opened in a ceremony on July 16, 2004 as part of a three-day celebration that included an inaugural concert by the Grant Park Orchestra and Chorus. 300,000 people took part in the grand opening festivities. Since then, Millennium Park has become the one of the most fashionable residential addresses in the city with rumors that the Mayor is planning to move there (it was announced later that he had changed his mind). More recently, 60602 was named by Forbes as the hottest zipcode in the country with upscale buildings such as The Heritage at Millennium Park (130 N. Garland) leading the way for other buildings such as Waterview Tower, The Legacy and Momo. The median sale price for residential real estate was $710,000 in 2005 according to Forbes.

Features

Millennium Park is a portion of the larger Grant Park, the "front lawn" of downtown Chicago and one of the larger public parks in metropolitan Chicago and is a showcase for postmodern architecture. It features the McCormick Tribune Ice Skating Rink, Peristyle at Wrigley Square, Joan W. and Irving B. Harris Theater for Music and Dance, AT&T Plaza, Lurie Garden, Chase Promenade and Trees in Millennium Park. There are three major artistic highlights: Cloud Gate, Crown Fountain and the Jay Pritzker Pavilion. Millennium Park is often considered the largest roof garden in the world, having been constructed on top of a railroad yard and large parking garages. Of its total 24.5 acres of land, Millennium Park contains 12.04 acres (524,358 square ft) of permeable area. The park's accessibility has won its project director the 2005 Barrier-Free America Award in recognition of individual leadership in making our country more accessible for all Americans.^[1]

Pritzker Pavilion

Main article: Jay Pritzker Pavilion

The principal signature of Millennium Plaza is the Jay Pritzker Pavilion, a band shell designed by world-renowned architect Frank Gehry with 4,000 fixed seats plus additional lawn seating for 7,000. A Pritzker Architecture Prize honoree and National Medal of Arts winner, Gehry designed such landmarks as the Guggenheim Museum at Bilbao, Der Neue Zollhof in Düsseldorf and the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. Characteristic of Gehry, the Pritzker Pavilion consists of curving planes of stainless steel resembling the graceful blooming of a flower or the unfurling sails of a massive ship. The Pritzker Pavilion is the home of the Grant Park Music Festival, the nation's only remaining free, municipally-supported, outdoor, classical music series. The Festival is presented by the Chicago Park District and the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs.[1] Winding eastward from Pritzker Pavilion is the only bridge in the world designed by Frank Gehry. The 925-foot (282 m) pedestrian bridge, clad in the same type of steel sheet as the bandshell with a hardwood deck, winds like a fluttering ribbon across nearby Columbus Drive, from the bandshell to a section of Grant Park along the lakefront.

Cloud Gate

Main article: Cloud Gate

AT&T Plaza is home to Cloud Gate, a three-story, 110-ton steel sculpture that has been dubbed by residents as "The Bean". The sculpture is the work of world-renowned artist Anish Kapoor and is the first of his public art in the United States. The piece was privately funded and the total cost was $23 million — up from the original estimate of $6 million. Cloud Gate is a highly-polished reflective steel sculpture that is meant to resemble a drop of mercury hovering at the point of landing on a plaza of the park. When Millennium Park opened in 2004, the grid of welds around each metal panel were still visible. But in early 2005 workers polished out the seams. The curved, mirror-like surface of the sculpture provides striking reflections of visitors, the city, and the sky; since its installation, it has probably become the most popular sculpture in the city.

Crown Fountain

Main article: Crown Fountain

Crown Fountain, named in honor of Chicago's Crown family, was designed by Catalan conceptual artist Jaume Plensa, and is the first of its kind in the world. Transparent glass block bricks are used to build two 50-foot (15 m) towers standing at either end of a long, black granite plaza submerged under an eighth of an inch layer of water. Behind the glass bricks are high-tech LED video screens that when illuminated, scrolls through videos of the faces of nearly a thousand individual Chicagoans and showcases the vast diversity of the city while a stream of water cascades over the images. Playing on the theme of historical fountains based around gargoyles with water coming through the open mouth of the creature, each video includes specific moments where the person purses his or her lips and the fountain spews water from a point in the video display that makes it appear as though the person is spitting the water out. This phenomenon occurs roughly every five minutes.

Budget

The project was known for its notorious delays (it was originally intended to open in 2000 instead of 2004) and tripled costs. Some Chicagoans began to refer to the project deridingly as "next-millennium" park. During development and construction of the park, many structures were added, redesigned or modified. These changes often resulted in budget increases. For example, the band shell's proposed budget was $10.8 million. When the elaborate, cantilevered Gehry design required extra piling be driven into the bedrock to support the added weight, the cost of the band shell eventually spiraled to $60.3 million. The total cost of the park, as itemized in the following table, amounted to almost $500 million. Much of the fundraising was borne by local business leaders, including the Pritzker family and Crown family.

Criticism and controversy

The Millennium Park project has been the subject of some criticism since its inception. In addition to concerns about the cost overrun, individuals and organizations have complained that the money spent on the park might have gone to other worthy causes, specifically citing ongoing issues with poverty in Chicago and problems within the city's schools. However, others believe that Chicago's potential to become a new type of metropolitan Olympic city could boost investment into the city, helping to fund more social and educational problems in the longer term. Although the park's design and architectural elements have won wide praise, some criticism of the aesthetics of the park has been noted. Other criticism has revolved around the larger issue of corruption and political favoritism in the city; for example a July 2004 New York Times article [2] reported that an inflated contract for park cleanup had gone to a company that made large contributions to Mayor Daley's election campaign. Concerns have also been raised over the use of mixed taxpayer and corporate funding and associated naming rights for sections of the park. While a large monument in the northwest corner of the park honors the many private and corporate donors who contributed to its construction, entire squares and plazas within the park are named for their corporate underwriters, with the sponsors' names prominently indicated with stone markers (Boeing Gallery, Exelon Pavilion, AT&T Plaza, Wrigley Square); some critics have deemed this to be inappropriate for a public space. The park curfew and obvious presence of security guards is also cited in some quarters as working against the idea of a public park. A controversy arose when the park enforced a requirement for professional photographers to obtain a paid permit to photograph the artwork in the park for commercial purposes. In doing so, the city cited the copyrights of the artists who created the works (particularly the popular Cloud Gate sculpture), which give the artists sole right to profit from their work. However, enforcement of the permit requirement was inconsistent and sometimes heavy-handed, resulting in some non-commercial photographers and tourists being accosted while taking pictures of the sculpture, and leading to a public perception that they are banned from taking pictures of the park they helped pay for (as noted above, though, copyright applies to images taken, not for personal use, but only for commercial purposes).

• On May 11 through May 12, 2007 Looptopia, a "dusk-to-dawn" event occurred, which encouraged public access to the Chicago Loop area throughout the evening. Public access to the park was completely prevented by police enforcement of the park curfew.

Notes

See also

• Chicago architecture
• List of concert halls
• List of contemporary amphitheatres
• Looptopia

External links

• City of Chicago Millennium Park
• Public Building Commission of Chicago Millennium Park Overview
• Chicagoist on the photography "ban"
• Chicago Public Radio special -- audio segments about the park