Montgomery Ward Tower Building
6 N. Michigan Avenue
Chicago, IL 60602
The lakefront by right belongs to the people. It affords their one great unobstructed view, stretching away to the horizon, where water and clouds seem to meet. No mountains or high hills enable us to look over broad expanses of the earth’s surface; and perforce we must come even to the margin of the lake for such a survey of nature. These views calm thoughts and feelings, and afford escape from the petty things of life. Mere breadth of view, however, is not all. The lake is living water, ever in motion, and ever changing in color and in the form of its waves. Across its surface comes the broad pathway of light made by the rising sun; it mirrors the ever-changing forms of the clouds, and is illumined by the flow of the evening sky. Its colors vary with the shadows that play upon it. In ever aspect it is a living thing, delighting man’s eye and refreshing his spirit. Not a foot of its shores should be appointed by individuals to the exclusion of the people. On the contrary, everything possible should be done to enhance its natural beauties, thus fitting it for the part it has to play in the life of the whole city. It should be made so alluring that it will become the fixed habit of the people to seek its restful presence at every opportunity.
Daniel Burnham’s The Plan of Chicago
There were the raucous and greedy men of the turn-of-the-century City Council, who decided they were going to fill the downtown lakefront with an enormous civic center. (Built, naturally, by several of their good friends.) They forgot that Aaron Montgomery Ward was watching and willing to take on the whole lot of ‘em.
Lois Wille’s Forever Open, Clear and Free: The Struggle for Chicago’s Lakefront
The 1836 decree designating Chicago’s lakefront as “Public Ground — A Common to Remain Forever Open, Clear and Free” was the basis for Montgomery Ward’s fight to protect Chicago’s lakefront, and also the title of Lois Wille’s quintessential 1972 book documenting that and other efforts to preserve it as a public space.
The Illinois Central Railroad (ICRC) built an industrial train trestle over the water in the 1850s, separating the shore from the lake. Following the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, the land east of Michigan Avenue (now Grant Park) was used as a dump site--charred rubble and debris, along with other detritus. By the 1880s, the area was crowded with railway sheds, stables, and debris. City officials treated the land as vacant and tried many times to build on it. The City Council, as well as Mayor DeWitt Clinton Cregier, who served from 1889-1891, wanted to build on the landfill: a civic center, a new city hall, commercial buildings, a post office, a police station, a power plant, stables for city garbage wagons and horses. It seemed inevitable that the downtown lakefront would become a fully built-out zone of public institutions, private buildings, and further railroad expansion.
Aaron Montgomery Ward (1843–1913), founded the first mail-order company when he sent out a single-page catalogue on August 18, 1872; by the start of the 1930s, Montgomery Ward & Co. was also the largest retailer in the country, with more than 500 stores. Ward had just built his company's posh headquarters on the northwest side of Michigan and Madison Avenue when he became "watchdog of the lakefront." Ward successfully sued the City of Chicago four times in the Illinois Supreme Court (e.g., City of Chicago v. Ward, 1897; Ward v. Field Museum, 1909). He argued that as a Michigan Avenue property owner, he had a right to an unobstructed view of Lake Michigan.
In a 1909 interview with the Chicago Tribune, Ward said, “Had I known in 1890 how long it would take me to preserve a park for the people against their will, I doubt I would have undertaken it. I think there is not another man in Chicago who would have spent the money I have spent in this fight with certainty that gratitude would be denied as interest.” In that interview, Ward compared Chicago’s lakefront favorably to the Bay of Naples, and said his motivation was to preserve it as a “breathing spot for the poor” rather than a “showground of the educated rich.” Not only did Ward’s activism cost him money (more than a million in today’s value), but he also became a kind of pariah among the press and politicians, known as a “human icicle.”
Chicago broke ground on Millenium Park in 1998 and completed the project in July 2024. Millenium Park used to be a part of Grant Park, and technically is still the northwest corner of the broader Grant Park area. Grant Park stretches all the way to Roosevelt Road to the south, and Randolph Street to the north.
This area that used to be a sprawling blight and for more than a century was unusable to the public is now a cultural wonderland. It includes artist Anish Kapoor’s famous sculpture, Cloud Gate, which everybody calls The Bean; the Jay Pritzker Pavilion, an outdoor concert venue with a seating and a large lawn, designed by Frank Gehry; the Crown Fountain, an interactive exhibit with two 50-foot LED screens on either side that flash images as children (and sometimes adults) splash in the erupting water spouts; the Lurie Garden, a 2.5-acre space that includes a massive (15-foot) “shoulder hedge” that pays homage to Sandburg’s description of Chicago as the “City of the Big Shoulders”; a lawn area; an outdoor exhibition space for rotating artwork; and a pedestrian bridge that links to Maggie Daley Park, which opened on Dec. 13, 2014. The lakefront space hosts the annual Blues, Jazz and Grant Park Musical Festivals, as well as the Millenium Park Summer Music Series and free Chicago Symphony Orchestra concerts (as well as the rehearsals leading up to the performance). The park hosts an art festival. There is a free movie night in the summers and ice skating in the winters. Restaurants and bars and outdoor vendors.
So, Ward died on December 7, 1913. Why did it take another three-quarters century to transform the lakefront? The Illinois Central Railroad, mostly. It owned the land. In the 1852 Charter, the City Council granted the railroad perpetual rights to lay tracks right along the downtown lakefront, in exchange for building a breakwater to protect Chicago's shoreline from lake storms. ICR had no incentive to give up the land, especially since it was valuable as a switching sight. Daniel Burnham had to build his 1909 Plan of Chicago around the filthy railway yards. Then in 1954, the City built the ugly Monroe Street Parking Garage, which made any future projects nearly impossible. But in 1977, Mayor Richard M. Daley managed to buy the airspace above the railway yards from IRC. Eventually, through major engineering breakthroughs, the City was able to build what is called a “concrete roof” above the active ICR yard. The expanse of that lakefront space is actually above ground level. The Monroe Street Parking Garage had to be restructured and is now part of a larger maze of “underground” parking lots and the IRC still operates down there, as well.
The west side of Michigan Avenue marks the end of the Historic Michigan Boulevard District, which begins around 11th Street and ends at Randolph. In addition to the Chicago Cultural Center, there are two notable historic buildings—the 12-story People’s Trust & Savings Bank Building (20 N. Michigan Avenue), built in the neoclassical style in 1922 and converted to condos in the 1990s; and the 15-story Michigan Boulevard Building (30 N. Michigan), built in 1914 to house rich professionals (like doctors and dentists) and expanded in 1923.
Wille won two Pulitzer Prizes during her storied journalism career, and left as a legacy her work dedicated to urban and lakefront issues.
More than a quarter century after Ward’s death, copywriter Robert L. May created the storybook Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer as a shopper’s giveaway. What started as a promotional stunt in Ward’s became a Christmas classic in many American households.
A Tribute Marker of Distinction stands in front of the building.
