 Arcadia en Chicago
The History of the DuSable Park Project
By Kris Belden
A barren patch of land sits near Navy Pier.
The land, undeveloped and seemingly forgotten, appears as lost in downtown: Although you can see the space from the sidewalk bike route on the lower level of Lake Shore Drive, you can't physically get to it. Stairwells are padlocked. Fences and bodies of water keep it untouched and give it a sense of the forbidden. It just rests quietly in the shadow of highway bridges and high-rise condo developments, so quietly that it makes you wonder if it has a story to tell.
Almost every day on her bike ride to work at the School of the Art Institute, sculpture professor Laurie Palmer passed this barren patch of lakefront land. One day she stopped to consider why the land was there and how it had eluded urbanization. "I didn't know what I was doing when I started," she said. "It was about a curiousity. The land had a certain nostalgia to it. I wanted to go there."
Palmer had begun a quest to research and get to know her haven.
After some investigation Palmer learned that the space is officially a three-acre penninsular tip called DuSable Park, bounded on the north by Ogden Slip, a boat inlet, on the south by the mouth of the Chicago River, and on the east by Lake Michigan.
"They [the City of Chicago] didn't have it on the map, and couldn't find who owned it," she said. "That seemed so bizarre."
Palmer eventually discovered that the land was owned by a private development company, MCL, which in collaboration with the Chicago Park District was to start building a park there in 1987. The park was meant to commemorate Jean Baptiste Pointe DuSable, a Haitian explorer who was the first non-native settler in Chicago.
Yet, several issues have hindered the development of DuSable Park. The project was initially delayed in 1987 because the Park District said that between $700,000 and $4.4 million needed to be spent on repairing the seawall that separates the land from water. Also, tests from random surface samples taken recently have shown uneven contamination by radioactive thorium (because of excavations done in nearby construction) in the land's soil.
Since neither faction can afford to pay for repairs, MCL and the Chicago Park District wanted to allow another developer to build a temporary parking structure on the land to raise money for the park's development. Soon, that plan was abandoned though, after it became evident that anti-freeze and gasoline run-off from the parking lot would cause additional pollution problems.
So, for now, the land sits in limbo.
But for Laurie Palmer, as a sculptor who has a keen interest in public art, DuSable Park has become an active and imaginative place with limitless potential for site-specific projects. "The apparent wildness of this spot and its inaccessibility in the midst of prime downtown real estate suggested a nest of contradictions and possibility," she said.
Palmer began to flesh out ideas for how to develop the land not in a physical, but in an artistic sense. On the website dedicated to what has since become 3 Acres on the Lake: DuSable Park Proposal Project, Palmer articulates her very personal connection to this land, touches on the universal need for nature (especially in the city), and explains her vision for creating artwork out of these ideas:
"I grew up among hills, and with a meadow in back of our house that we didn't own but that I regularly trespassed on. My nostalgic fantasy is to roll down that meadow-hill in Chicago in late summer under a hot sun, disappearing in the tall grasses, and letting bugs crawl onto my face among hay smells and water sounds; but to do so in solitude, undetectable, grasshopper-like, alone. This fantasy is in direct conflict with the idea of public land. Public access and all that goes with it - safety, maintenance, functional design, and universal access - would destroy exactly what attracted me to the meadow: its isolation, neglect, and opportunistic possibilities."
Palmer decided to call on others from the Chicago arts community in an effort to brainstorm ideas for what DuSable Park could become, her thematic question for artists being, "How do we reconcile public use with private desires?" The results of Palmer's solicited responses can be seen this month at Gallery 312 in 3 Acres on the Lake: DuSable Park Proposal Project.
Proposals for the on-site project are hung around the gallery in the form of blueprints, models and essays. Even though no prizes were offered and no assurances of implementation were given, about 65 artists responded to Palmer's call for entries.
With no funds yet available to develop the land, none of these proposals has the chance of coming to fruition anytime in the near future. But Palmer maintains that this project has been more about exploring artistic ideas, rather than about pushing a political campaign.
Regarding the project Palmer said that she is "interested more in the potential than the reality." The proposals are independent artworks with no direct ties to real plans for developing the site.
The proposals on view at Gallery 312 range from traditional to untraditional, serious to silly. One entry proposes making the park into a botanical garden, in honor of the DuSable League. Another plan calls for DuSable Park to be the launching point for gondola boats filled with flowers, which the visitors may rent for the day or afternoon.
One proposal imagines the site as a metaphoric dumping ground for high-rise trash. And yet another proposal calls for erecting a giant cow sculpture on DuSable Park "because many people would see it as an abomination, and focus their attention on fixing the site."
Whatever it takes, Palmer hopes that, "giant cow or not," something worthwhile will be done with the land she's been so drawn to in the last year, that is after the issue of contamination and the decaying seawall have been resolved. In addition to curating this exhibit, Palmer is involved in a coalition to help promote the constructive development of DuSable Park. From this experience Palmer said she has gained a new, heightened sense of responsibility to her community.
"So much goes on in the city, and we don't investigate it or see if something else can be done," she said.
3 Acres on the Lake: DuSable Park Proposal Project a public art project intiated by Laurie Palmer at Gallery 312, located at 312 N. May Street, runs through October 19.
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