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Washington Park refers to a neighborhood and a park on the South Side of Chicago, USA. Washington Park is a 380 acre (1.5 km²) park between Cottage Grove Avenue and Martin Luther King Boulevard, (formerly known as "South Park"). Laid out by Frederick Law Olmsted in the 1870s, interesting sights are the DuSable Museum of African American History and its sculpture garden, the Lorado Taft sculpture Fountain of Time, and an architecturally distinctive National Guard regiment. It once contained the Washington Park Race Track, and hosted some of the leading horse races in the U.S. during the nineteenth century.1 The track was closed in 1903. Washington Park is a social center of the South Side and hosts many festivals in the summer, including Chicago's best organized cricket league. In Native Son, Bigger Thomas drives the drunken Jan Erlone and Mary Dalton around Washington Park, as the two embrace. Washington Park is part of Chicago's boulevard system. From Washington Park, one can take the Midway east to Jackson Park, Garfield Boulevard west to Midway Airport, or Drexel Boulevard north to the central city.
Today In September 2006 it was announced that an Olympic Stadium is being proposed for Washington Park as part of Chicago's bid for the 2016 Olympics. The stadium would seat 95,000 initially for the games & then be which would be converted to a 10,000-seat below-ground arena for track-and-field and cultural events after the Olympics. The cost is estimated to be at least $300 million (USD).
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