[6] Cornell hired Frederick Law Olmsted and his partner, Calvert Vaux, to lay out the park in the 1870s.

Horace William Shaler Cleveland executed the plans within the limitations of the financial setbacks from the fire (including the loss of tax rolls) and the 1873 depression.

The loss of financial backing and difficulty in levying taxes after the fire meant that a water park could not be built on the property.

[8] From 1897 until the 1930s the park housed an impressive conservatory and ornate sunken garden designed by D. H. Burnham & Co. at 56th Street and Cottage Grove.

[10] One of the earliest improvements was the "South Open Green", a pastoral meadow with grazing sheep, also used as a ball field.

Architect Daniel H. Burnham's firm designed the 1880 limestone round stables, the 1881 refectory, and the 1910 administrative headquarters for the South Park Commission.

Other early attractions to the park included riding stables, cricket grounds, baseball fields, a toboggan slide, archery ranges, a golf course, Swimming pool, bicycle paths, row boats, horseshoe pits, greenhouses, a rose garden, a bandstand, a small zoo featuring six alligators, and a lily pond.

[14] Washington Park was a site of tension and conflict arising from the demographic changes resulting from the African American expansion into the neighborhood in the period following the First World War.

The stadium would have seated 95,000 initially for the games, and would have been converted to a 10,000-seat below-ground arena for track-and-field and cultural events after the Olympics.

[17][18][19] Additional details about the plan included new permanent hockey fields, use of Jones Armory, and new pedestrian juncture between the two halves of the park by tunneling part of Morgan Drive (55th).

[20] The October 2009 decision to award the 2016 Summer Games to Rio de Janeiro halted these plans.

[25] Washington Park is a social center of the South Side and hosts many festivals in the summer, including Chicago's best organized cricket league and the terminus of the Bud Billiken Parade and Picnic.