Landscape Information
Measuring approximately one acre, this intimately scaled, sunken garden, built atop a parking garage on the south side of the Art Institute of Chicago, opens onto South Michigan Avenue. Designed and constructed between 1962 and 1967, the garden is one of Dan Kiley’s best-preserved commissions from that period.
Blending classical and Modern principles, the design is elegant in composition and material. Parallel to the avenue, two elongated, raised planters flank the garden’s main entrance and contain three staggered rows of honey locust trees edged with a low privet hedge and underplanted with ivy ground cover and spring flowering bulbs. Moving inward from the avenue, a central, rectangular pool animated by jets terminates at a sculptural bronze-and-stone fountain by sculptor Lorado Taft, the Fountain of the Great Lakes (1913). The pool is flanked by recessed gardens, set eighteen inches below street level. On either side is a grid of square, marble-edged, 30-inch-tall planters that provide seating. The northern edge of the garden is defined by an elevated, balustraded terrace, whereas the southern edge is framed by a stone wall. Each planter is sited twenty feet on center, and together, they form a gridded bosque of cockspur hawthorn trees, which are underplanted with ivy ground cover and herbaceous plants for color in the summer months. The low branching trees create a canopy of dappled light over the ground plane carpeted in crushed stone. At the rear of the plaza, the allegorical sculpture is framed by a continuous low bed of honey locust trees underplanted with flowering shrubs, seasonal bulbs, and herbaceous plants that complement the beds along Michigan Avenue.
In 2015 the Art Institute of Chicago, South Garden received the American Institute of Landscape Architects (ASLA) Landmark Award.
