Paul Cornell (lawyer)
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Paul Cornell (1822-1904) was a New York Lawyer and visionary Chicago real estate speculator who is the founder of Hyde Park on the south side of Chicago.
Hyde Park
In 1853, he bought 300 acres of Hyde Park property between 51st Street and 55th Street as a speculative investment. The Hyde Park community was 7 miles south of the mouth of the Chicago River and 6 miles south of downtown Chicago. In the 1850s Chicago was still a walkable urban area well contained within a 2 mile radius of the center. In 1856 Paul Cornell essentially invented the Chicago railroad suburb. In an effort to improve his land value, he deeded 60 acres to the Illinois Central Railroad in exchange for a train station and a commitment of 12 daily trips to Chicago’s Central Depot.
At about the same time he built the Hyde Park House a 4 story hotel at 53rd Street and Lake Michigan. The hotel became the focal point of the community and drew affluent guests with leisure time and discretionary income. This site is now occupied by the Hampton House
Among his contributions to the city was the spirit of guardianship over the Lake Michigan waterfront. Paul Cornell specifically forbade heavy industry development in Hyde Park. The neighborhood flourished for the next two generations.
In 1889, the entire Hyde Park township (the area south of 39th Street and east of State Street), which had quintupled in population from a 1880 population of 15,716 to a 1889 population of 85,000, voted for annexation to the City of Chicago.
He was a visionary whose successful planning and push for a town with a lakefront park, a Plaissance, an adjoining park and boulevards shaped the town. His vision for a cornerstone institution to complete the implementation of his plan arrived with the University of Chicago that resulted from the philanthropy of John D. Rockefeller and Marshall Field in 1890. Hyde Park maintained it social quality as a community by enforcing racially restricted covenants to the exclusion of African-American residents. This guideline remained in force for nearly 100 hundred years until struck down by the United States Supreme Court.
Grand Crossing
Paul Cornell also purchased the swampland and prarie 8 miles South of the Loop at the intersection of the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern Railroad and the Illinois Central Railroad at a location that now is 75th Street and South Chicago Avenue in 1855. He subdivided parcels for sale through the 1870s. The area, which was first named Cornell, became Grand Crossing.
Chatham
Paul Cornell established the Cornell Watch Factory at 76th and the Illinois Central tracks in 1876 in the Chatham Community.
Civic Leadership
Paul Cornell served on the served on the south parks commission. As a civic leader he along with his peer William La Baron Jenney, the west parks commissioner, commissioned designers such as Frederick Law Olmsted, Calver Vaux, Ossian Simonds, H. W. S. Cleveland, and Jens Jensen to create landscaped cemeteries, to implement a coordinated parks and boulevard system and to design the railroad-served suburbs to complement urban civilization.
Sources
Grinnell, Max Images of America: Hyde Park, Illinois, 2001 Arcadia Publishing Keeting, Ann Durkin Chicagoland, 2005 University of Chicago Press Eds. Grossman, James R., Keating, Ann Durkin, and Reiff, Janice L., 2004 The Encyclopedia of Chicago, The University of Chicago Press