Japanese Garden on Jackson Park’s Wooded Island, 2022. Photo by Julia Bachrach.
Aerial view of the Wooded Island, ca. 1935. Chicago Park District Records: Special Collections, Chicago Public Library, Photograph.
I am devoting my November blog to one of my very favorite places—the Japanese Garden on the Wooded Island in Jackson Park. Although we’re heading into late fall, I highly recommend a visit to the island for a stroll or to birdwatch, to enjoy quiet overlooks, and to spend time in the beautiful garden. With the Obama Presidential Center rising nearby just to the west, the island will surely soon attract large numbers of visitors just as it did when it was first created for the World’s Columbian Exposition. With that thought in mind, I’d like to share the site’s fascinating and somewhat complicated history with you.
Soon after its formation in 1869, Chicago’s South Park Commission hired renowned landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted to create the original plan for its 1,055-acre greenspace. Known originally as South Park, the site included Eastern (Jackson Park) and Western (Washington Park) Divisions, and the Midway Plaisance. For the Eastern Division, Olmsted envisioned a lagoon system with lushly planted banks that would link with Lake Michigan to provide a sinuous boating experience. This part of Olmsted’s plan had not been executed when Olmsted returned to Chicago 20 years later to help transform the site into the fairgrounds for the World’s Columbian Exposition. There is no doubt, however, that the original plan guided Olmsted’s vision for the fairgrounds.
Map Showing Progress Made in the Improvement of the Eastern Division of South Park, 1880. Olmsted Archives, National Park Service. Note: The non-colored part of the map shows the unimplemented portion of Olmsted’s original plan, which included a large peninsula area that would later be reshaped into the Wooded Island.
As landscape architects for the fair, Olmsted and his young associate, Henry Sargent Codman, worked closely with architects Daniel Hudson Burnham and John Wellborn Root. In an article entitled “The Landscape Architecture of the World’s Columbian Exposition” Olmsted explained that, early in the planning, the four men had conferred and made sketches “on a large scale, of the whole scheme” for the grounds. They decided “that the principal Exposition buildings would each have a water as well as a land frontage and would be approachable by boats.”
Grand Basin of the World’s Columbian Exposition Jackson Park, Chicago, Illinois. From Puck Magazine, 1893.
The designers determined that “near the middle of this lagoon system there should be an island, about fifteen acres in area, in which there would be clusters of the largest trees growing upon the site; that this island should be free from conspicuous buildings, and that it should have a generally secluded, natural, sylvan aspect.” They suggested that the opportunity to commune with nature on the island would provide relief from the hustle and bustle of the fair.
Souvenir Map of the World’s Columbian Exposition, 1893. Library of Congress.
Despite their commitment to keeping the island free of buildings, Olmsted and Burnham received intense pressure to erect structures there and to use the island for exhibit space. According to Olmsted’s article, the designers believed that, of all the suggestions, the one that would have the “the least intrusive and disquieting result” was the Japanese government’s proposal to build its pavilion on the island. Designed by Japanese architect Masamichi Kuru, the Ho-o-den, or Phoenix Palace, had a central pavilion and two outer wings, each representing one of three epoch periods of Japan’s history. As explained in a 2013 article by Robert W. Karr, the fair pavilion gave Japan the opportunity to “introduce the world to its rich artistic heritage, culture, and traditions.” Unlike other fair buildings, the Ho-o-den was presented as a permanent gift to Chicago from the government of Japan.
Dedication of the Ho-o-den, 1893. From The Dream City: A Portfolio of Photographic Views of the World’s Columbian Exposition.
Much to Olmsted’s chagrin, in addition to the Japanese pavilion, the island was also used for garden displays that were considered part of the exhibits for the Horticulture Building, an impressive structure with a glass dome located just west of the lagoon system. (The most fanciful display was a large rose garden with winding paths on the southeast side of the island.) There was not a Japanese garden adjacent to the Ho-o-den. Rather, a concession known as the Japanese Tea Garden stood on the banks of the lagoon north of the Fisheries Building, and a Japanese garden display was included in the interior of the Horticulture Building.
View of Japanese Tea Garden from Lagoon. From Official Views Of The World's Columbian Exposition, 1893.
Not long after the fair closed, Kikutarō Shimoda, a Japanese architect who was known in the United States as George R. Shimoda, did suggest the creation of a Japanese Garden in Jackson Park, Lincoln Park, or on the Midway Plaisance. None of those projects moved forward, however.
Minutes of the South Park Commissioners, January 7, 1895.
Both the Ho-o-den and the rose garden continued to draw visitors to the Wooded Island in the decades after the end of the fair. In March of 1933, the island also received the gift of 500 cherry trees presented by Yoshio Muto, Japanese Consul General of Chicago. The donation seems to have drawn attention to the poor condition of the Ho-o-den, which by then had suffered substantial deterioration. In the summer of 1933, the Chicago Tribune reported that, although the Wooded Island had long given Chicagoans an Eden “of their own in the center of Jackson Park,” the Japanese pavilion had been wrecked by “vandals and souvenir hunters.” Some members of the South Park Commission suggested that the trio of buildings should be razed.
Japanese Ho-o-den. Photograph by C.D. Arnold, 1893. Ryerson and Burnham Art and Architecture Archive, Art Institute of Chicago.
Fortunately, as Chicago Tribune reporter James O’Donnell Bennett noted on February 18, 1934, George T. Donahue, General Superintendent of the South Park Commission, believed that “sentimentally and artistically, the Japanese group is irreplaceable.” Therefore, Donahue secured federal relief funds from President Roosevelt’s Civil Works Administration to help restore the Ho-o-den and create an adjacent Japanese Garden. Emanuel V. Buchsbaum and Robert E. Moore, the South Park Commission’s chief architect and landscape architect, headed the project.
“The Jodan-no-ma, or Central Hall of the Ho-o-den at the World’s Columbian Exposition,” From The Decorator and Furnisher, Vol. 23, No. 5, Feb. 1894.
Bennett reported that the original Japanese craftsman had built the structure “so well that many of their choicest effects in richly carved redwood, metal, and lacquer have survived forty years of exposure to weather and vandalism.” The project included restoring some of the pavilion’s beautiful interior details such as carved wooden transom panels (ramma) that had been created by Takamura Kо̄un and two-sided sliding doors (fusuma) attributed to Hashimoto Gaho. (Both were renowned Japanese artists.)
Top: Close-up of one of the original carved transom panels that is now exhibited in the Art Institute of Chicago. Bottom: Chicago Park District staff members discovered three of the Ho-o-den’s painted sliding doors hidden away in a storage space in 2015. They are now in the collections of the Art Institute.
As plans for the new Japanese Garden were beginning to take shape, Chicagoan Shoji Osato asked the South Park Commissioners for the opportunity to run a tea concession in the garden. A Japanese immigrant, Shoji Osato (1855-1955) was a professional photographer. While working for an Omaha, Nebraska newspaper, he was sent to photograph Frances Fitzpatrick, the daughter of a local architect, for the society page.
Left: “Pretty Society Girl, Bride of Artist, Very, Very Happy,” Omaha Evening Bee, January 14, 1919. Right: Osato’s Japanese Tea House in Jackson Park, ca. 1935, Mildred LaDue Mead, photographer. University of Chicago Photographic Archive.
Shoji and Frances fell in love and eloped in 1919. They moved to Chicago in 1925 with their two daughters and infant son. Osato continued to work as a photographer until 1933, when he opened a Japanese Tea House at A Century of Progress World’s Fair in Burnham Park. At the close of the fair in 1934, Osato received permission to move his tea house to Jackson Park.
Japanese Tea Gardens Brochure and Menu, ca. 1935. Chicago Park District Archives.
According to an undated Chicago Park District report, the design for the Japanese Garden was governed by some of the site’s physical conditions. The property directly east of the Ho-o-den, “descended six feet or more into a horse-shoe shaped swampy area” which had formed because the edge near the water had been filling with soil. Despite these unpleasant conditions, the swampy area was “surrounded on the north and south by magnificent old elms, oak, linden, maples, mulberry, and catalpas.” The garden plan called for dredging “irregular pools with a tiny arched bridge at the center.” (This type of curved bridge is known as a Moon Bridge.) The pools would be “fed by a cascade tumbling over three boulder falls and a spillway.” The report also noted that the garden would have winding gravel paths with stepping blocks of irregular patterns. Often found in Japanese gardens, such walks symbolize the “belief that the soul wanders after it leaves this earth.”
Colorized Glass Slide of Ho-o-den and Japanese Garden, ca. 1935. Chicago Park District Records: Special Collections, Chicago Public Library, Photograph.
Upon its completion, the Japanese Garden was filled with tens of thousands of perennial flowers, groundcovers, and shrubs. The lushly planted landscape included scilla, crocuses, violets, trillium, lilies, hepatica, bloodroot, ferns, Japanese witch hazel, and sumac. Landscape architect Alfred Caldwell (1903-1998), then freelancing for the South Park Commission, served as a consultant to help with the garden’s design and installation. (Having trained with Jens Jensen, Caldwell would go on to work for the Chicago Park District and later collaborated with architect Mies van der Rohe.)
Plan for Japanese Garden, Wooded Island, Jackson Park. South Park Commission, ca. 1934. Chicago Park District Records: Special Collections, Chicago Public Library, Drawing.
Mayor Jane Byrne and other dignitaries on the Moon Bridge in the newly restored Japanese Garden, 1980. Chicago Park District Records: Special Collections, Chicago Public Library, Photograph.
Soon after Imperial Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the Ho-o-den was boarded up and the garden began to fall into disrepair. The U.S. government detained Shoji Osato as an “alien enemy” and incarcerated him with German nationals. The anti-Japanese policies and intense prejudice that the Osatos experienced was devastating for the whole family. The eldest daughter, Sono, who had become a nationally-renowned dancer with Ballet Russe, was prohibited from leaving the U.S. Tim, the youngest child, joined an all Japanese-American unit of the Army and fought in WWII. In 1946, the Ho-o-den was destroyed by a series of arson fires, most likely because of the terrible racial prejudice that continued after the war.
During the early 1960s, Hyde Park residents rallied for the restoration of the Japanese Garden. The Chicago Park District added lighting to the Wooded Island in 1965, but few other improvements were made at that time. The community continued to push for the revitalization of the garden. Finally, substantial funds were secured from the federal and state governments, and the Park District completed a major restoration of the Japanese Garden in 1980.
Yoko Ono’s Skylanding sculpture stands on the site of the Japanese Pavilion, 2022. Photo by Julia Bachrach.
The Park District continued making improvements to the garden between the 1990s and today. After Chicago and Osaka, Japan became Sister Cities in 1992, Osaka donated $250,000 for additional work to the garden, including a new torii entrance gate. In the early 2000s, landscape architect Sadafumi Uchiyama, an expert on Japanese Gardens, guided a substantial renovation. In more recent years, the non-profit organization Project 120 has sponsored efforts such as the planting of hundreds of cherry trees in Jackson Park and commissioning of Yoko Ono’s Skylanding sculpture on the site of the Ho-o-den.
View of Garden towards Moon Bridge, which is currently boarded up. 2022. Photo by Julia Bachrach.
For more than 20 years, Karen Szyjka has served as the Curator of the Japanese Garden for the Chicago Park District. She works closely with the North American Japanese Garden Association and does a stellar job as steward of the precious site. She recently brought in expert craftsmen to rebuild the waterfall. Over the past year or so, there have been problems with vandalism and the Moon Bridge was recently damaged. Karen is quite on top of it, and reconstruction will be completed soon.