Located in the Englewood community, Hamilton Park & Cultural Center totals 29.95 acres and features two gymnasiums, an auditorium, dance studio, archery range and a multi-purpose room. Outside, the park offers a swimming pool, baseball/softball diamonds, basketball, handball, and tennis courts, playground. Many of these spaces are available for rental including our gymnasium, auditorium, fields, dance studio and multi-purpose room.
Park-goers can participate in Park Kids, seasonal sports, aerobics and Pilates. On the cultural side, Hamilton Park offers ballet, jazz and hip hop dance classes. After school programs are offered throughout the school year, and during the summer youth can participate in the Park District’s popular six-week day camp. In addition to programs, Hamilton Park hosts fun special events throughout the year for the entire family, such as our annual jazz concert.
History
The South Park Commission created Hamilton Park in 1904 as part of a revolutionary system of neighborhood parks providing relief to Chicago's congested tenement districts. The city's existing parks were far away from the noisy, overcrowded immigrant neighborhoods in the center of the city. Superintendent J. Frank Foster envisioned a new type of park that would not only provide beautifully landscaped "breathing spaces," but also a variety of services and educational functions. Nationally renowned landscape architects the Olmsted Brothers and architects Daniel H. Burnham and Company designed the entire system of new parks. The first ten neighborhood parks opened to the public in 1905. Of the ten parks, Hamilton was the only one named for a national political figure. It honors Alexander Hamilton (1755-?1804), advisor to George Washington and first secretary of the U.S. Treasury, who was killed in a duel with Aaron Burr. The theme of national political history is beautifully conveyed in the Hamilton Park fieldhouse murals, executed by noted Chicago artist, John Warner Norton. The other nine parks, Sherman, Ogden, Palmer, and Bessemer Parks, and Mark White, Russell, Davis, Armour and Cornell Squares, were named for figures who were significant to the development of Chicago.