Millennium Park Turns 20

Consisting of public art, a garden, an indoor theater, an outdoor bandshell with lawn, a skating rink, a restaurant, and a bike center, all sitting atop railroad lines and a huge garage for thousands of cars at the northwest corner of Grant Park, Millennium Park was one of the largest and most complicated projects of planning, architecture, engineering, and landscape bridging the millennium — anywhere, not just in Chicago. Revealed to the public by then-Chicago Richard M. Daley in 1998, the controversial, nearly half-billion-dollar park opened to the public on July 16, 2004.

From its inception, Millennium Park was slated to be a tourist draw, aided greatly by the inclusion of the bandshell designed by Frank Gehry, a snaking pedestrian bridge by the same starchitect, and public artworks — Jaume Plensa's Crown Fountain and Anish Kapoor's Cloud Gate — that were ready-made for selfies. The park was master planned by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill but is known for these and other individual elements, rather than as an interlocking whole.

The popularity of the park in the twenty years since its opening has been aided further by the opening of Renzo Piano's Modern Wing addition to the Art Institute of Chicago one block north in 2009, and Michael Van Valkenburgh's Maggie Daley Park one block of the park east in 2015; Millennium Park is linked to the first by a Piano-designed bridge and the second by Gehry's snaking pedestrian bridge.

Although details are slim on the anniversary celebration, the announcement from the mayor and DCASE says “this four-day celebration will include activities for families and youth, workouts, new public art, dance performances, and concerts featuring headliners to be announced — presented by DCASE with the Grant Park Music Festival and others.” Tourists, mark your calendars!