Mary Bartelme Park/Adams-Sangamon Park
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.
115 South Sangamon
(312)742-7529
chicagoparkdistrict.com
Audience choice:
Millennium Park
Michigan Avenue between Randolph and Monroe Street
(312)742-1168
millenniumpark.org
Best of Chicago 2010