Northerly Island

Northerly Island is a 91-acre (370,000 m²) man-made peninsula along Chicago's lakefront. The site of the Adler Planetarium, Northerly Island connects to the mainland through a narrow isthmus along Solidarity Drive dominated by Neoclassical sculptures of Kościuszko, Havliček and Copernicus. With the demolition of Meigs Field Airport, it is now a part of the Museum Campus and has been converted into parkland. A semi-temporary concert venue, the FirstMerit Bank Pavilion occupies part of the site of the former airport.

History

The idea for Northerly Island began with Daniel Burnham's "Plan of Chicago" which called for the creation of Northerly Island as a lakefront park at the northern end of a five-island chain between Jackson Park and 12th Street, the only lakefront structure to be built based on Burnham's 1909 Plan of Chicago (a plan created just over 5 years after the Wright Brothers' historic first flight). Northerly Island forms the southern end of Chicago Harbor (now Monroe Harbor), and the eastern boundary of Burnham Harbor. As indicated by the color green on the original plan, the island was to be populated by trees and grass for the public enjoyment. Daniel Burnham died in 1912. By 1916, Edward H. Bennett, co-author of the Plan of Chicago, wrote that a lakefront location would be most suitable for an airport serving the central business district. By 1922, Chicago Mayor William Hale Thompson recommended locating the downtown airport at Northerly Island. Work on the island began in 1920 when Chicago voters approved a $20 million bond issue to create Northerly Island, with construction completed by 1925. Due to the Great Depression and WW II, the proposed airport, later named Meigs Field, did not open until 1946.