Midway Plaisance

rdf:langString Midway Plaisance

rdf:langString Jackson Park Historic Landscape District and Midway Plaisance

rdf:langString Jackson Park Historic Landscape District and Midway Plaisance

rdf:langString View of Collegiate Gothic architecture of The University of Chicago, taken looking northwest from the grassy, tree-lined Midway.

rdf:langString The Midway Plaisance, known locally as the Midway, is a public park on the South Side of Chicago, Illinois. It is one mile long by 220 yards wide and extends along 59th and 60th streets, joining Washington Park at its west end and Jackson Park at its east end. It divides the Hyde Park community area to the north from the Woodlawn community area to the south. Near Lake Michigan, the Midway is about 6 miles (10 km) south of the downtown "Loop". The University of Chicago was founded just north of the park, and university buildings now front the Midway to the south, as well. The park came to prominence when the Midway was first laid-out to host popular amusements at the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893, later lending its name, "midway", to areas at county and state fairs and amusement parks with sideshows. Landscaped with long vistas and avenues of trees at the start of the 20th century, the Midway in part followed the vision of its designer Frederick Law Olmsted, one of the creators of New York City's Central Park, but without his proposed feature of a Venetian canal down the Midway's center linking the lagoon systems of Jackson and Washington parks. Instead, the Midway is landscaped with a fosse, lawn covered depression, where the canal would have been, although in the winter parts of the grounds are turned over for ice skating. Later designers and artists added (or sought to add) their vision to the Midway. A pet project of the University of Chicago and almost a part of its campus, it has remained essentially a green area.