Collyer Park

Situated in the Historic East Side Neighborhood, Collyer Park hosts many neighborhood activities. Its mature trees offer relaxing shade and respite from summer heat. The park offers sand volleyball, tennis and pickleball courts, picnic tables, two shelters and a train-themed playground. One of the three original parks in the Chicago-Colorado Colony, Collyer Park was named after Robert Collyer (1823-1912), a blacksmith's son born in Yorkshire, England and grandson of one of Lord Nelson's sailors at Trafalgar. Collyer immigrated in 1850, and worked in Pennsylvania as a hammer maker and self-educated Methodist preacher. A prolific author and widely traveled speaker, he promoted the movement to Colorado with the idea of building a temperance colony, though he himself never moved west. Collyer Park was developed around 1871 on a full city block and is four acres in size. In 1920 the City built a bandstand in Collyer Park where the high school bands gave weekly concerts in the summer. In 1969, the bandstand was taken down.