We visited the beautiful Millennium Park and Time Gilfoyle lead the tour. Tim was very knowledgeable about Chicago and its history, as well as the history of Millennium Park.
Millennium Par runs from Monroe to Randolph Avenue and from Michigan Avenue to Columbus.
The park was built in the 1900’s and it wasn’t built knowing it would be so popular today.
Originally it was just Grand Park. The park was configured with the introduction of the car and had an ugly parking lot sitting on the side.
Something that blew my mind completely and gave me an idea of just how powerful a person with wealth can be is when Tim said that the reason why the park was “remodeled” and turned into Millennium Park was because his dentist’s office was located right across the street from the park, every time he went to the dentist Daley said he “had and ugly view” and just like that he decided to fix the park.
It’s a great thing that he actually cared about turning the park into the beautiful park that it is today, but at the same time it bothers me.
Yesterday in class we were discussing poverty and bad neighborhoods; it shocked me and took me by surprise hearing that Daley along with some of the wealthiest people in Chicago took the initiative to build a multimillion dollar park. I’ve read articles that talk about homeless people in the city; I’ve also read about projects designed to help people on the streets, but can never be completed because either the budget is too short or this or that. I see how our majors, both Daley Senior and Junior have nothing but excuses!
The major had NO problem at all raising money to build this multimillion dollar budget park, so my question is, How come he always says that there is not enough budget when it comes down to doing something that will actually benefit people in the city of Chicago.
I do understand that Millennium Park is a private park and that Daley did not entirely pay for all of its construction, but Daley was responsible for raising the money in order for this park to be built! So why can’t his son Major Daley Jr. do the same when it comes down to taking care of people on the streets that are sick and can’t obtain the medications they need? Or helping them get jobs?
I’m sure that if he was able to raise Millions of dollars to built this park, his son Daley junior could do the same to help homeless people who freeze to death in the winter.
Today I realize that our city has more than enough money and is very capable of improving our “worse” neighborhoods. The city is capable of so many things that will attract tourism…so why can’t they be able to raise money to actually improve the neighborhoods like South Shore on the south side???
In my opinion, I think that wasting millions of dollars on one part of the city only just so that ONE person can have a better view is a very selfish and wrong thing to do. Our major cares about enhancing the image of Chicago by spending so much money on areas downtown, where tourists visit. why doesn’t he spend millions of dollars trying to enhance the neighborhoods that him and others complain are so bad?
I feel that he wants to put a face about Chicago to tourists that its not, I believe every city does..because they focus so much on only certain areas of the city to attract tourism and bringing in money but they don’t focus on fixing the areas where workers that serve the tourists live! Workers who maintain the city and keep it moving, yet the Major and the city do not care.
Maybe if the people stood up and fought for their rights to live just like everyone else, if people fought for the right to improve their neighborhoods, our city would not be infested with gangs on every other block. Maybe some areas of the city would not have such a high crime rate, if the Major and the people who supposedly care did something about improving the whole city instead of just two blocks where tourists visit.
The whole idea about building Millennium Park was to “shoot for the moon” and it was done very well.
Even though I believe building Millennium Park was a very selfish and ambitious project, it still is a very beautiful park. I learned a few cool facts about it today.
The two water towers that are located in the park serve a purpose; I never understood why faces appeared, or whose faces they were on the glass blocks.
Today I learned that the faces that appear on the towers are faces of random Chicagoans. The reason why so many different faces appear is because they want to show how diverse Chicago is. I think that this is a very bright thing, I’ve never thought about that but I do see now why they would put faces of people from many different races up there.
The final cost of the fountain was 17 million dollars.
I also learned a very cool fact about the “bean”, its original name is Cloud Gate. It’s called the cloud gate because the artist wanted it to be “a gate to the sky”.
Finally, the last cool fact I learned was that when Millennium Park first opened, a review writer from New York referred to it as “a park on steroids”
Which I found very interesting :), but I think it was just out of pure jealousy that Chicago is a city 100 times better than New York :)
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