Special Feature
Milton Lee Olive Park:
A Landscape Legacy
by Heather Prince
We have a rich legacy of horticulture that
runs as a green ribbon throughout Chicago. From the far-seeing legacy of Daniel Burnham’s lakefront of parks and green space to the large civic parks scattered throughout, many famous names of landscape architecture have left their mark. As we walk the paths set out by Jensen and Olmsted, we also have mid-century modernist spaces to explore. One of those that tends to sail along under the radar is Milton Lee Olive Park adjacent to Navy Pier. A Dan Kiley landscape, the 10-acre park was completed in 1965 as part of the Central District Filtration Plant, now known as the Jardine Water Purification Plant. Constructed on fill and jutting into Lake Michigan, the site is separated into two portions. The east section is the massive filtration plant that includes an underground reservoir, labs, pump-rooms, and administration offices, and occupies the majority of the sixty-one-acre site. The west section, Milton Lee Olive Park, serves as a gateway to the plant and is a public park. Kiley and his team worked with architectural firm C.F. Murphy Associates to develop the site. We talked with Joe Karr, landscape architect, who at just 26, was the lead on the project at the same time as he oversaw the construction of the South Garden of the Art Institute of Chicago. “I went to work for Dan Kiley in early 1963,” recalled Karr. “At that time, the filtration plant was already underway. The architect was C. F. Murphy and Associates which later became Murphy Jahn,
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with Helmut Jahn, and finally JAHN. Dan Kiley was very active in Chicago and across the country from San Francisco to New York. He had a great connection to Chicago through the C. F. Murphy office and the Harry Weese office.” The central filtration plant is just one of three that serves the city of Chicago. “There were three filtration plants – one on the North Side, one central, and one on the South Side,” commented Karr. “The big plant next to Navy Pier, it consists of two filter buildings, each one 10 acres in size, with an administrative section in between the two. The project scope was doing landscaping around the whole thing. The only part that’s accessible to the public is Milton Olive. The rest of the landscape can be viewed from the high rises.” Next to the glitz and carnival of Navy Pier, it’s easy to miss the tall wrought iron gates of the park tucked next to the Ohio Street Beach. A broad pebbledash drive forms a straight avenue through a grove of honeylocust trees gently tilted from prevailing winds. Once through the copse, your vista opens to the broad sweep of the lakefront and the spectacular skyline. The avenue leads you to a cantilevered landing at the central point jutting out over the water and dotted with granite benches. The whole panorama of Chicago is laid out, but it’s easy to be drawn into the far vistas of water and sky as you continue to the end of the drive. Honeylocust is planted in blocks to line this broad avenue, breaking up the clean lines. (continued on page 42)
The Landscape Contractor February 2022
