Garfield Park Conservatory

About this place

Chicago’s Garfield Park Conservatory opened in 1908. This landscape art under glass replaced three small Victorian glass houses that had been built in the 1800s. One of the largest in the world the Garfield conservatory was unlike any other 19th century building. Architect Jens Jensen designed it to resemble the form of a Midwestern haystack and worked with a New York firm that specialized in building greenhouses. Inside the green house plants were displayed on the ground with pipes installed behind stonework walls which helped create expansive landscape views. The aquatic or fern house is the centrepiece of the Conservatory and it includes some of the designer’s loveliest stone and water elements. A waterfall within the building looks so natural that many visitors assume the conservatory is constructed around it.