page_title: Millennium Park
section_title: Height restrictions
hierarchical_section_title: Millennium Park / Controversy / Height restrictions
caption_attribution_description: English: Pritzker Pavilion looking north at night. This was scanned from a 120mm color film positive.
context_page_description: Millennium Park is a public park located in the Loop community area of Chicago in Illinois operated by the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and managed by MB Real Estate. The park was intended to celebrate the third millennium and is a prominent civic center near the city's Lake Michigan shoreline that covers a 24.5-acre section of northwestern Grant Park. The area was previously occupied by parkland, Illinois Central's rail yards, and parking lots. The park, which is bounded by Michigan Avenue, Randolph Street, Columbus Drive and East Monroe Drive, features a variety of public art. As of 2009, Millennium Park trailed only Navy Pier as a Chicago tourist attraction and by 2017 it had become the number one tourist attraction in the Midwestern United States. In 2015, the park became the location of the city's annual Christmas tree lighting.
  Planning of the park began in October 1997. Construction began in October 1998, and Millennium Park was opened in a ceremony on July 16, 2004, four years behind schedule. The three-day opening celebrations were attended by some 300,000 people and included an inaugural concert by the Grant Park Orchestra and Chorus.
context_section_description: In 1836, a year before Chicago was incorporated, the Board of Canal Commissioners held public auctions for the city's first lots. Foresighted citizens, who wanted the lakefront kept as public open space, convinced the commissioners to designate the land east of Michigan Avenue between Randolph Street and Park Row (11th Street) "Public Ground—A Common to Remain Forever Open, Clear and Free of Any Buildings, or Other Obstruction, whatever." Grant Park has been "forever open, clear and free" since, protected by legislation that has been affirmed by four previous Illinois Supreme Court rulings. In 1839, United States Secretary of War Joel Roberts Poinsett upon decommissioning the Fort Dearborn reserve, declared the land between Randolph Street and Madison Street east of Michigan Avenue "Public Ground forever to remain vacant of buildings".
  Aaron Montgomery Ward, who is known both as the inventor of mail order and the protector of Grant Park, twice sued the city of Chicago to force it to remove buildings and structures from Grant Park and to keep it from building new ones.  In 1890, arguing that Michigan Avenue property owners held easements on the park land, Ward commenced legal actions to keep the park free of new buildings. In 1900, the Illinois Supreme Court concluded that all landfill east of Michigan Avenue was subject to dedications and easements.  In 1909, when Ward sought to prevent the construction of the Field Museum of Natural History in the center of the park, the courts affirmed his arguments.
  As a result, the city has what are termed Montgomery Ward height restrictions on buildings and structures in Grant Park. However, the Crown Fountain and the 139-foot (42 m) Pritzker Pavilion were exempt from the height restrictions, because they were classified as works of art and not buildings or structures. According to The Economist, the pavilion is described as a work of art to dodge the protections established by Ward, who is said to continue to rule and protect Grant Park from his grave. The Harris Theater, which is adjacent to Pritzker Pavilion, was built almost entirely underground to avoid the height restrictions.  The height of the Crown Fountain, which is also exempted as a work of art, has been described as stemming from a "pissing contest" with other park feature artists.
caption: Jay Pritzker Pavilion is classified as a work of art to avoid legal restrictions on its height
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