Formal Garden

One of Chicago's oldest existing gardens, Lincoln Park's Formal Garden was designed and planted in the late 1870s. It was one of several landscape improvements made when the park was expanded from its original sixty acres to new boundaries between Diversey Pkwy. and North Ave. (Today, the park stretches from Ardmore St. to Ohio St.) The garden originally surrounded the park's first greenhouse, which dated to the same period. Flowers propagated in the greenhouse were planted in the garden. The formal design of this "French style" garden was considered especially appropriate as the setting of a

horticultural facility. The garden remained after the greenhouse was demolished in 1890 and replaced with the impressive Victorian conservatory, which still stands today.

The Formal Garden has been the setting for important works of sculpture since its early history. The Monument to Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller, "prince of poets," was commissioned by a group of Chicagoans of German descent and dedicated in 1886. An exact replica of a sculpture erected ten years earlier in Schiller's birthplace in Germany, this work is considered the masterpiece of its sculptor, Ernst Rau. In 1887, a second

sculpture, Storks at Play also known as the Bates Fountain, was placed in the garden. A gift of lumber baron Eli Bates, the fountain sculptures were created by the renowned artist, Augustus Saint-Gaudens and his assistant Frederick William MacMonnies. The garden's third sculpture is more recent. Dedicated in 1987, the Bust of Sir Georg Solti, was sculpted by Dame Elisabeth Frink, and honors the late Maestro of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

Lincoln Park Conservatory and Formal Garden, ca. 1980. Chicago Park District Special Collections.

Formal Garden