LINCOLN PARK — The Alfred Caldwell Lily Pool, one of the city’s most treasured and celebrated architectural achievements, is open again after years of renovation.

Tucked between the rush of cars on Lake Shore Drive and the steady hum of Clark Street, the Alfred Caldwell Lily Pool is a hidden oasis in the heart of the city.

Through the garden’s Prairie-style gate, the noise of the North Side thins from a hum to a hush, like a radio dial turned to low, making sonic space for birds and the sound of water lapping over Niagara limestone.

A winding path circles the lily pool, past native wildflowers with oaks, hackberries and hawthorns hanging shade over the green space.

The Alfred Caldwell Lily Pond recently reopened in Lincoln Park, as seen on Sept. 9, 2025. Credit: Colin Boyle/Block Club Chicago

Designed by Alfred Caldwell, the famed architect behind Promontory Point and Riis Park, the Lily Pool was part of a Victorian garden built in 1889 that was home to tropical lilies and other aquatic plants.

When that garden fell into disrepair, Caldwell, who was appointed as the Park District’s principal designer in the 1930s, designed what was formerly known as the Lincoln Park Rookery.

In the 1950s, under Marlin Perkins, Lincoln Park Zoo director, the Lily Pool was converted into a water exhibit for exotic birds and waterfowl. Over time, the birds overgrazed the area while invasive species and “weed” trees choked out Caldwell’s native plantings. Heavy foot traffic and patchwork repairs sped up the erosion, and by the mid-century mark the Park District closed the site to the public.

For decades, the Lily Pool sat neglected, its stonework broken, its pond filled with silt and debris. Trees grew unchecked, blocking sunlight and suffocating the wildflowers.

When Caldwell visited the site in the early ’90s, the Tribune reported that he described what had become of his creation as a “dead world.”

That decline sparked momentum for a full-scale rehabilitation.

The Alfred Caldwell Lily Pond recently reopened in Lincoln Park, as seen on Sept. 9, 2025. Credit: Colin Boyle/Block Club Chicago

From 1998 to 2002, the 2.7-acre site underwent a $2.4 million restoration led by the Park District and the Lincoln Park Conservancy.

Friends of Lincoln Park, now known as the Conservancy, raised $1.2 million for the effort, matched by a grant from the U.S. Forest Service.

The multimillion-dollar renovation brought back Caldwell’s original Prairie School vision of winding limestone paths, shaded native plantings and a meandering pond anchored by two pavilions.

The restoration cemented the Lily Pool’s place as one of the city’s great architectural and landscape treasures. In 2006, it was designated a National Historic Landmark, one of only a handful of landscapes in Chicago to earn that recognition. It is also listed on the National Register of Historic Places and as a Chicago Historic Landmark.

The Alfred Caldwell Lily Pond recently reopened in Lincoln Park, as seen on Sept. 9, 2025. Credit: Colin Boyle/Block Club Chicago

The Lily Pool’s legacy has always been tied to Caldwell himself.

In 1955, Caldwell was a professor at Illinois Institute of Technology and took then-student and longtime Tribune reporter Ron Grossman for a walk around the Lily Pool.

Grossman described Caldwell embracing one of the pavilion’s pillars and patting the stones he had laid a half-century earlier.

“When I was 8, I planted some radish seeds,” Caldwell told Grossman that day. “And I’ve never gotten over the thrill of seeing the first green of those plants push up through the soil.”

That same stubborn thrill fueled Caldwell’s work at the Lily Pool.

When Park District officials balked at his proposed wildflower plantings, he cashed in an insurance policy for $250, rented a truck and drove to Wisconsin to buy thousands of plants. By the next afternoon, with the help of friends, he had covered the site in blooms.

The Alfred Caldwell Lily Pond recently reopened in Lincoln Park, as seen on Sept. 9, 2025. Credit: Colin Boyle/Block Club Chicago

The Lily Pool’s Latest Renovation

The garden closed in fall 2023 so crews could begin a major renovation of its historic wooden pavilions, which had weathered two decades of Chicago winters and thousands of visitors since the Lily Pool’s last full restoration in the early 2000s.

The Lincoln Park Conservancy, which manages the site alongside the Park District, led the project. Workers replaced roofing, white oak timbers and copper detailing to match Caldwell’s original design and tended to tree care, plantings and stonework around the pond.

The Lily Pool’s closure stretched far longer than anyone expected. When the Conservancy announced the pavilion renovation in 2023, leaders hoped the garden could reopen for at least part of the 2024 season.

But as carpenters pulled apart the weathered structure, they found more damage than anticipated: Closer to 85 percent of the white oak timbers needed to be replaced, not just half, as engineers first thought.

The Alfred Caldwell Lily Pond recently reopened in Lincoln Park, as seen on Sept. 9, 2025. Credit: Colin Boyle/Block Club Chicago

The Alfred Caldwell Lily Pond recently reopened in Lincoln Park, as seen on Sept. 9, 2025. Credit: Colin Boyle/Block Club Chicago

Because the Lily Pool is a National and Chicago Historic Landmark, every replacement had to match the original materials Alfred Caldwell used in the 1930s. That meant sourcing rare 20-foot-long white oak boards, then waiting months when a specialty kiln in western Ohio — the only one big enough for the job — broke down mid-project.

By spring 2025, another obstacle emerged. A mix of heavy rain and early heat waves slowed installation of the pavilion’s custom copper roof, delaying the reopening once again.

Rafael Rosa, executive director of the Lincoln Park Conservancy, wrote in a blog post in mid-August that crews used the downtime to make other improvements to the garden. They recalibrated the waterfall to reduce flooding, removed invasive plants that had crowded out Caldwell’s intended flora and added hundreds of new native plantings.

Rosa had initially thought that construction would take months, even longer. But a few days after his August update, the Conservancy was able to announce Sept. 8 as the reopening date for the Lily Pool.

The Alfred Caldwell Lily Pool is open dawn to dusk daily at 125 W. Fullerton Parkway, just steps from the zoo and conservatory. After years of waiting, Chicagoans once again have a quiet corner of prairie-inspired beauty to escape to in the middle of the city.

Listen to the Block Club Chicago podcast: