Chicago, Illinois
2001

The very first of Chicago’s limestone quarries, Stearns Quarry opened in the 1830s and was continuously mined until 1970. Soon after its closing, this anomalous hole in the urban fabric played a new role in the life of the city as a municipal landfill. Surrounded by the historic and diverse Bridgeport neighborhood, the once 380 foot deep excavation was close to being completely filled, leaving little evidence of the once massive dig.

The strategy for transforming the quarry into a dramatic urban park called for orchestrating the on-going importation of fill, truckloads dumped and sculpted to form a giant ziggurat rising above the preserved remnant pit. Landfill leachate was to be remediated on site in a series of treatment gardens, offering environmental education on the way to fishing in a clean pond with walls full of ancient fossils.

Clients + Collaborators

City of Chicago Department of Environment; Roy F. Weston, engineers.