Publisher's Synopsis
In 1836 Chicagoans set aside the first narrow shoreline as public ground and declared it "forever open, clear, and free." Dennis H. Cremin reveals that despite such intent, the transformation of Grant Park to the spectacular park it is more than 175 years later was a gradual process, at first fraught with a lack of funding and organisation, and later challenged by erosion, the railroads, automobiles, and a continued battle between original intent and conceptions of progress.
