Riding in the Parks

 

Galloping on the Midway 1955 (apf2-09063 in the Uchicago digital collections).

Around 2003, I noticed that there was a sign on Woodlawn just north of 60th that said Horse Crossing. That seemed odd until I realized that the cinder jogging path running the length of the Midway from Washington Park toward Jackson Park must have originally been a riding path. Around the same time, there was a prolonged dry spell and the outline of the original cinder riding paths in Jackson Park showed up as different colors in the parched grass. There were once almost 8 miles of riding trails in the South Park system. There was a long tradition of riding in the park. Daniel Burnham had designed the round house south of the DuSable Museum as a stable in 1880. In the 1920s, the university fielded a polo team that practiced on the Midway and the women’s athletics department offered an Equestrian class.

A 1985 article in the Tribune noted that as late as 1966, the Hyde Park Riding Stables at 742 East 61st Street served 200 riders every weekend. The owner, Mrs. O. D. Baldwin, declared that she wasn’t going to leave the city: “People are entitled to Park bridle paths.” But stables are smelly and real estate rose in value so NIMBYism and urban renewal eliminated the last public stables in the city. The university’s landscaping blocks the Midway trail now from Ellis to Woodlawn. The remnants of the trails get rare use whenever the Chicago Police horses, housed at the South Shore Cultural Center, practice or the Broken Arrow Riding Club trucks their horses in for a ride.