Free movies DuSable Museum. The Chicago Park District is showing free movies in the Washington Park this summer.
When: All start times are approximate, all movies start at dusk.
Where: Washington Park, DuSable Museum, 5531 S. Martin Luther King Dr. Location Notes: Movie showing in the sunken lawn behind the DuSable Museum. (773) 256-1248.
Saturday, July 20, 2019 – 8:15pm Movies in the Parks at DuSable Museum
Washington (George) Park Movie: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse – PG – CC
Saturday, August 17, 2019 – 8:00pm Movies in the Parks at DuSable Museum
Washington (George) Park Movie: Trinity Goodheart – NR – CC
History of Washington Park (redacted from CPD)
Designed by Frederick Law Olmsted & Calvert Vaux, Washington Park is one of Chicago’s most significant historic landscapes. Originally considered the “western division”—a 367-acre portion of the enormous 1055-acre South Park—it was connected to the park’s “eastern division” via a grand boulevard called the Midway Plaisance.
In 1881, the South Park Commissioners named the western division in honor of George Washington (1732–1799). The eastern division was named Jackson Park.
Olmsted and Vaux completed the plan for South Park in 1871. Burnham & Root designed two late nineteenth century buildings in the park—the stables and round house and the refectory which originally housed the offices for the South park Commissioners. In 1910 Burnham’s firm designed a larger administrative headquarters which houses the Du Sable Museum of African American History.
In 1922 Lorado Taft (1860–1936), created the Fountain of Time on the southeastern edge of Washington Park. Inspired by ”The Paradox of Time,” a poem by Henry Austin Dobson, Taft’s fountain is composed of an ominous cloaked Father-Time figure gazing at a wave-like procession of one hundred human figures across the water.
By the mid-1930s, the growing African-American community around Washington Park was in dire need of additional recreational facilities. The park district responded by building two competition-size swimming pools near the refectory. In the early 1990s, the park district rehabilitated the refectory and transformed the swimming area into a major aquatic center.
Recent projects include lagoon improvements, the construction of a $700 thousand playground, the creation of an arboretum, and a $2 million restoration of the Fountain of Time. Lagoon improvements were made in the early 2000s.
