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Grant Park Music Festival docent Elaine Roth remembers coming to the
Festival
as a young child with her parents and watching from the green wooden
park benches, when the concerts took place in a band shell on the south end of
Grant Park.
It was shortly after the Festival’s opening in 1935 and these free concerts during
the Great Depression were a blessing to families like the Roths. They’d take the
train downtown from the South Shore and head for the Grant Park Concerts,
founded by James C. Petrillo. As head of the Chicago chapter of the Federation
of Musicians, Petrillo passionately lobbied for musicians’ rights and created the
free concert series as a way to put orchestra members back to work during the
difficult days of the Depression.
And the public loved
those concerts! An
estimated two million
people came from
all over to see and
hear the music in
the park that first
summer. Throughout
the next few years,
audiences
flocked
to hear guest artists
like opera superstar
Lily Pons, crooner
Rudy Valee, clarinetist
Benny Goodman and
violinist Jasha Heifetz.
Left: A 1941 concert with Benny Goodman and the Woman’s Symphony. Right: Soprano Lily Pons
performs in Grant Park to more than 350,000 attendees. Opposite page: “The people of Chicago have
made this Park and this Pavilion their own,” Artistic Director and Principal Conductor Carlos Kalmar.
A GATHERING PLACE
