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The South Park District acquired land for this park in 1903.  Sherman Park was one of ten revolutionary Chicago parks which opened to the public in 1905. The City's population had grown from 300,000 in 1870 to 2 million by 1905, but less than 200 acres of new parkland had been created during that period. The noisy, overcrowded immigrant neighborhoods in the center of the City were far away from the existing parks. South Park Commission Superintendent J. Frank Foster envisioned a new type of park that would provide social services as well as breathing spaces to these areas. Nationally renowned landscape architects the Olmsted Brothers and architects Daniel H. Burnham and Co. designed the whole system of new parks. In addition to Sherman Park, these were Ogden, Palmer, Bessemer, and Hamilton Parks, and Russell, Davis, Armour, Cornell and Mark White Squares. (Mark White Square is now known as McGuane Park.) At 60 acres, Sherman Park was one of the largest of the parks.  In 1934, the park became part of the ¿ì²¥ÊÓƵ’s portfolio when the South Park District and 21 other park districts were consolidated.  The Olmsted Brothers transformed its low and wet site into a beautiful landscape with a meandering waterway surrounding an island of ballfields. The classically-designed architecture, located at the north end of the park, includes the fieldhouse and gym and locker buildings united by trellis-like structures known as pergolas.

This architectural commission was especially meaningful to Burnham because the park was named for his father-in-law, John B. Sherman (1825- 1902). The founder of Chicago's Union Stock Yards, Sherman served as a member of the South Park Commission for 25 years.