“In 1955, Alfred Caldwell walked me through the Lincoln Park Rookery, as it was then known. An oasis of green amid the city’s concrete and brick, hustle and bustle, it was afterward renamed the Alfred Caldwell Lily Pool, in honor of the landscape architect who created it.
“‘When we came to the small shelter that is its centerpiece he hugged one of its pillars and grunted affectionately. Patting the stones that he had laid a half century ago,’ I reported in a March 8, 1990, recounting of our tour for the Tribune.
“But the heart doesn’t measure life by clocks or calendars or datelines on faded newspaper clippings. My afternoon with Caldwell came to mind clear as a bell during the countdown to the Lily Pool’s reopening after being closed for repairs in 2024.
“I was a student of professor Caldwell’s at the Illinois Institute of Technology, and our Lincoln Park visit was his final lesson: Works of art are their creator’s children. They bring joy and sleepless nights. The Lily Pool at that time had been sadly neglected.
“‘When I was 8, I planted some radish seeds,’ Caldwell said while clutching the pillar, ‘and I’ve never gotten over the thrill of seeing the first green of those plants push up through the soil.’
“Bureaucrats were not going to deny him a similar thrill from his 1937 Lily Pool design. Chicago Park District higher-ups scratched his proposed wildflower plantings as too expensive. He found a work-around.
“‘I cashed in my insurance policy,’ Caldwell later recalled. ‘I got $250.’
“He hired a truck, drove to Wisconsin, bought thousands of plants, and was back in Chicago by early evening. With friends’ help, he started planting the wildflowers next morning, and by early afternoon the Lily Pool was finished.
“Accordingly, Caldwell‘s refuge mimicked pre-urban Chicago. He built it with large slabs of Niagara limestone, having stratified the edges, echoing the city’s limestone underpinnings, scoured by rapidly flowing ancient rivers.
“To complete the illusion, the Lily Pool was dubbed a prairie river, and fed by a waterfall, since a river implies a source of water.
“‘This waterfall, as a work of art, is a celebration,’ Caldwell said. (Grossman, Chicago Tribune, 8/4/25)