Many Chicago parks are merely utilitarian: flat rectangles of grass broken up by a few baseball fields and basketball courts. So it’s exciting when the Park District thinks outside the diamond and creates a unique green space. Opened last summer, Adams-Sangamon Park features a large, groovy playground with drawbridges and climbing nets, a dog run and man-made hills covered with native grasses. Boulders and seating cubes are strewn about in pleasingly random patterns. The coolest element? Huge silver gateways shaped like crooked picture frames, spraying refreshing mist in hot weather.
