The City of Chicago is celebrating the five-year anniversary of Millennium Park this week with a series of free outdoor events hosted at the park.
The past five years, though, represent only a tiny fraction of the history of the landmark. And, in Millennium Park, Timothy Gilfoyle tells that story from the beginning, when the site of the park was part of Lake Michigan. To do so, he studied the history of downtown; spent years with the planners, artists, and public officials behind Millennium Park; documented it at every stage of its construction; and traced the skeins of financing through municipal government, global corporations, private foundations, and wealthy civic leaders. As the Chicago Sun-Times observed when the book appeared, “the creation of the $475 million park—which opened in July 2004 four years late and at more than twice its originally projected cost—was fraught with tension among its high-powered participants, including Mayor Richard M. Daley, fund-raiser John H. Bryan and his network of deep-pocket private donors, and architects Frank Gehry and Adrian Smith, among others.… This high-stakes game of push-and-pull forms the dramatic core of historian Timothy J. Gilfoyle’s absorbing and lavishly illustrated Millennium Park.”
The tribute this lovely book pays to the park will last for many, many birthdays. But our Trivia Quiz based on the book will only be fun before you read Millennium Park and learn all of the answers yourself!