CHICAGO (WBBM NEWSRADIO) — The Chicago Park District Board unanimously approved landmark designation for Promontory Point near the Museum of Science and Industry on the South Side Thursday.
The board heard from local residents, including Gin Kilgore, Deputy Director of Friends of the Parks, who called Promontory Point a “magical place.”
“Some of my favorite childhood memories are scrambling on the rocks with my dad — much to my mom’s chagrin — of learning to become a confident swimmer through the Point’s easy access to the water, and whiling away the afternoons with my friends from Kenwood,” Kilgore said.
Julia Bachrach also addressed members of the board. She previously served as the Park District’s historian and preservationist for nearly three decades and was behind getting Promontory Point on the National Register of Historic Places.
“I’m here to strongly urge you to support the designation of Promontory Point as a Chicago landmark,” Bachrach said. “I was hired after the discovery of thousands of historic plans and drawings that had been hidden away in a vault beneath Soldier Field.”
Included in the documents: the 1936 design for Promontory Point by Prairie School landscape architect Alfred Caldwell.
The Chicago Commission on Landmarks and the City Council will now consider the landmark designation. Approval would preserve what Bachrach called “one of the most significant, historic landscapes and beloved greenspaces in Chicago.”
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