Photo Essay: Chicago's Millennium Park

Chicago's (much smaller) answer to Central park in the downtown area is Millennium Park, a fine example of urban art and architecture.

The park, 24.5 acres large, features metal sculptures that are large enough to see from blocks away.

It's a fine place for a stock photo tourist shot of myself.

My favorite part of the park is "Cloud Gate," also known as "the Bean". Described as a "bean-shaped Cloud Gate" sculpture, designed by London artist Anish Kapoor by the tourist literature, the metal refracts images and changes them, making for an interesting interactive experience.

You can walk under it. As you can see, many people do.

Here's a picture of me reflecting off of the Bean. It's art!

You can see a similar distortion effect of the city's skyline.

People cannot resist taking photos.

Little kids cannot figure it out.

The sculpture, which weighs 110 tons:

Cloud Gate is British artist Anish Kapoor's first public outdoor work installed in the United States. The 110-ton elliptical sculpture is forged of a seamless series of highly polished stainless steel plates, which reflect the city's famous skyline and the clouds above. A 12-foot-high arch provides a "gate" to the concave chamber beneath the sculpture, inviting visitors to touch its mirror-like surface and see their image reflected back from a variety of perspectives.

Inspired by liquid mercury, the sculpture is among the largest of its kind in the world, measuring 66-feet long by 33-feet high.

Also dominant in the park is the Jay Pritzker Pavilion, and open air concert venue. The metal roof is said to simulate flower petals. Sloping green lawns allow for 7,000 people, behind 4,000 seats.

It's an impressive structure:

The Pavilion stands 120-feet high, with a billowing headdress of brushed stainless steel ribbons that frame the stage opening and connect to an overhead trellis of crisscrossing steel pipes.

It probably sounds good too:

This state-of-the-art sound system, the first of its kind in the country, was designed to mimic the acoustics of an indoor concert hall by distributing enhanced sound equally over both the fixed seats and the lawn.

A bridge with metal lining allow pedestrians to walk above Chicago traffic from one part of the park to another.

Sculpture and moving images combine in the Crown Fountain. It has two facing glass block walls, water cascading down their sides, and video images of faces projected on the walls with the faces moving, blinding and smiling. It stands 50 feet tall.

Kids like it. So do parents. It's a nice place to hang out.


The park is another one of the treasures that the city of Chicago provides its populace.