About Loyola Park Advisory Council

Unlike most of these park boards, the North Shore District, formed in 1900, was at first interested only in enhancing the area through boulevard improvements along Sheridan Road, Pratt Boulevard, and Ashland Avenue.

Loyola Park was the sole park created by the North Shore Park District, one of 22 independent park boards consolidated into the Chicago Park District in 1934.

By 1905, however, public pressure had prompted the district to consider park development. The district spent several years mulling its options. Finally, in 1909, at the urging of the Rogers Park Woman’s Club, the North Shore District determined to concentrate its resources on purchasing land for a single beachfront park and boating basin known as North Shore Park. Shortly thereafter, noted landscape architect and engineer O.C. Simonds developed plans for a pier at the site, but these were never realized. By 1917, the North Shore District had acquired more than nine acres of lakeshore property. A small fieldhouse, built in 1923, soon provided game and club rooms. Playfields were flooded for ice skating in winter; in 1929, the local American Legion post erected a shelter house for skaters.

Several years after the Chicago Park District took over in 1934, local residents asked that North Shore Park be renamed. The park district agreed, and held a contest to choose a new name. Neighborhood residents favored the name Loyola Park, for nearby Loyola University. The Jesuits began to develop this important Rogers Park institution in 1906, when they purchased a 20-acre site between Devon and Loyola Avenues. During the 1930s, the university raised its neighborhood profile substantially by constructing a number of dramatic Art Deco buildings, including the Madonna della Strada Chapel. Around 1950, the Chicago Park District more than doubled the size of Loyola Park and built a new fieldhouse with an adjacent grandstand. Another half-acre was added in 1971, bringing the size of Loyola Park to more than 21.5 acres.