Landscape Information
Located in Garfield Park and measuring two acres, this conservatory was designed by landscape architect Jens Jensen in collaboration with the New York-based engineering firm Hitchings & Company. The large structure replaced three smaller greenhouses dating to the 1880s. Considered revolutionary when it opened in 1908, its form emulated a Midwestern haystack, while its interior rooms provided magnificent views. Jensen accomplished this by keeping the centers of rooms open and planting into the ground plane rather than exhibiting plants in potted containers. Walls of stratified stone separated interior spaces and hid mechanical systems. The Fern Room, as the complex’s central focus, includes a “prairie waterfall” and pool bordered by stratified stone. Jensen’s original plant collections were improved upon by August Koch, chief florist at the conservatory from 1912 through the 1930s. Koch turned the original Conifer House into an Aroid House but remained faithful to Jensen’s design idiom.
Rehabilitation efforts began in 1995 following decades of deferred maintenance. Three years later the non-profit Garfield Park Conservatory Alliance was established, which collaborates with the Chicago Park District on programing and interpretation. Adjacent to the conservatory is a Jensen-inspired City Garden, accessed by a bluestone terrace and also a winding path at the southwest corner that leads past mounds and beehives along the Lake Street border. Designed in 2008 by landscape architect Douglas Hoerr, this garden focuses on an offset elliptical lily pond—bisected by a wooden bridge—and a prairie-like meadow, around which are planted clusters of hawthorns, quaking aspens, and sugar maples. The conservatory was significantly damaged during a 2011 hailstorm and has since been restored.
Garfield Park and its conservatory are contributing features of the Historic Resources of the Chicago Park District listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1990 and the Chicago Park Boulevard System Historic District listed in 2018. They were both listed individually in 1993.
