Evanston residents have a newly reopened park to enjoy this fall. 

McCulloch Park in northwest Evanston is now open to the public after over a year of COVID-19-related renovation delays. 

The 1.7 acre park was originally scheduled to reopen in August 2020 after repairs to replace aging playground equipment. According to the city, McCulloch Park was not in compliance with Americans with Disabilities Act code and playground safety standards. However, financial and equipment supply constraints related to COVID-19 halted progress.

The park was named in 1975 after Evanston suffragist Catharine Waugh McCulloch, who died in 1945. McCulloch graduated from the Pritzker School of Law – known as the Union College of Law at the time – in 1886 and went on to start her own law firm with the support of the Equity Club, the country’s first female association of lawyers. 

Twenty-three years before the 19th Amendment’s ratification, McCulloch led a whistle-stop train tour throughout Illinois to support a “statutory suffrage” bill that would allow Illinois women to vote in presidential elections. She was the first vice president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, which became the League of Women Voters in 1920.

Saturday’s park unveiling in the 7th Ward featured the institution of a National Votes for Women Trail marker at the park, one of only four in Illinois.

McCulloch Park is not the only local park named after influential women. Harbert Payne Park honors women’s suffragist advocate Elizabeth Boynton Harbert and neighborhood activist Betty Jean Payne. Butler Park is named after Isabella Garnett Butler, founder of the Evanston Sanitarium, which provided care to Black Evanston residents when Evanston Hospital was segregated. 

“It’s a really well-used park,” Ald. Eleanor Revelle (7th) told Evanston RoundTable regarding McCulloch Park. “It’s a focus for the neighborhood, really the heart of the whole community.”

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Twitter: @JorjaSiemons 

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