Bessemer Park is a public park in Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A. Created in 1904, it was named for Henry Bessemer, the inventor of the eponymous steelmaking process. [1] The name is appropriate, since Chicago's most productive steel mill, the U.S. Steel Southworks, was located just a mile away.
Chicago, officially the City of Chicago, is the most-populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and the third-most-populous city in the United States. With an estimated population of 2,705,994 (2018), it is also the most-populous city in the Midwest. Chicago is the county seat of Cook County, the second-most-populous county in the US, and portions of the city extend westward into neighboring DuPage County. It is the principal city of the Chicago metropolitan area, often referred to as Chicagoland. At nearly 10 million people, the metropolitan area is the third-most-populous in the nation.
Illinois is a state in the Midwestern and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It has the fifth largest gross domestic product (GDP), the sixth largest population, and the 25th largest land area of all U.S. states. Illinois has been noted as a microcosm of the entire United States. With Chicago in northeastern Illinois, small industrial cities and immense agricultural productivity in the north and center of the state, and natural resources such as coal, timber, and petroleum in the south, Illinois has a diverse economic base, and is a major transportation hub. Chicagoland, Chicago's metropolitan area, encompasses over 65% of the state's population. The Port of Chicago connects the state to international ports via two main routes: from the Great Lakes, via the Saint Lawrence Seaway, to the Atlantic Ocean and from the Great Lakes to the Mississippi River, via the Illinois Waterway to the Illinois River. The Mississippi River, the Ohio River, and the Wabash River form parts of the boundaries of Illinois. For decades, Chicago's O'Hare International Airport has been ranked as one of the world's busiest airports. Illinois has long had a reputation as a bellwether both in social and cultural terms and, through the 1980s, in politics.
Sir Henry Bessemer was an English inventor, whose steel-making process would become the most important technique for making steel in the nineteenth century for almost one hundred years from 1856 to 1950. He also played a significant role in establishing the town of Sheffield as a major industrial centre.
The park was created by the South Park Commission as part of a new neighborhood park system in Chicago. Living conditions for immigrants in search of the "American dream" had become intolerable because of overcrowding. Most people didn't own cars. Other parks were too far away. Park superintendent J. Frank Foster conceived a new type of parkland for population-dense areas—parks providing "breathing spaces" and a host of other amenities, from public bathing to organized recreation. The Olmsted Brothers and the architects Daniel H. Burnham and Co. were engaged to design the entire park system, including Bessemer Park. [1]
The Olmsted Brothers company was an influential landscape architectural firm in the United States, established in 1898 by brothers John Charles Olmsted (1852–1920) and Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. (1870–1957), sons of the eminent landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted.
Bessemer Park boasts a gated and beautifully landscaped nature garden planted with a wide variety of native flowering trees, shrubs and forbs.
