# The best playgrounds in Chicago Written 2026-10-25 by Play Day. Chicago playgrounds by neighborhood, from Maggie Daley Park to Oz Park and Indian Boundary, and which ones have a restroom, a fence, shade or water play. Chicago goes big for kids, and a lot of it is free: the video faces at Crown Fountain in [Millennium Park](https://ourplayday.com/places/millennium-park-chicago) spouting water into a wading pool, [Lincoln Park Zoo](https://ourplayday.com/places/lincoln-park-zoo) with no ticket, kayaks on the river, and a park with the Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion standing guard over the playground. The three-acre play garden at [Maggie Daley Park](https://ourplayday.com/places/maggie-daley-park) is the playground we'd cross the city for, with a play ship, a slide crater and a mirrored maze on the lakefront. The rest are neighborhood parks that happen to be excellent: a playground beside a duck lagoon in West Ridge, a boathouse and spray pool on the river in Albany Park, a Wizard of Oz playlot in Lincoln Park, and a brand-new campus in Brighton Park. Most sit inside bigger Park District parks, so when the kids are done with the slides there's a pool, a canoe launch or a beach a few steps away. ## Downtown and the river ### [Maggie Daley Park](https://ourplayday.com/places/maggie-daley-park) Neighborhood: The Loop Three acres of play garden on the lakefront, split by age and theme. The Sea has a big metal play ship with a captain's wheel, ladders and nets, plus a whale and a lighthouse tower with an exit slide, for ages 5 to 12. The Watering Hole and the Harbor are for 2 to 5: animal figures with small sprays that run in summer, a shade structure, a raised boardwalk and a full-sized play boat. Slide Crater has wide slides, rail slides and a suspension bridge between two towers, the Enchanted Forest has a turning stone and a mirrored maze, and the Wave Lawn is steep grass slopes for hide and seek. The 20-acre park around it has two climbing walls up to 40 feet tall (anyone at least 3.5 feet tall and 5 years old can climb), mini golf, picnic groves and the skating ribbon, and the BP Pedestrian Bridge connects it to [Millennium Park](https://ourplayday.com/places/millennium-park-chicago). - Restroom: Yes - Shade: Yes - Water play: Yes - Swings: Yes - Accessible play: Yes - Ages: All ages ### [Millennium Park (Crown Fountain)](https://ourplayday.com/places/millennium-park-chicago) Neighborhood: The Loop Crown Fountain is two 50-foot glass block towers at either end of a shallow reflecting pool, and the towers play video faces of a thousand Chicagoans with water flowing out of their mouths. The pool has no deep water, so a toddler wades straight in and a wheelchair rolls in too. The water runs from mid-spring to mid-fall and the faces are on all year. Cloud Gate, the Bean, is a few steps away on the Chase Promenades, the BP Bridge crosses to [Maggie Daley Park](https://ourplayday.com/places/maggie-daley-park), and the Nichols Bridgeway leads to the Art Institute. - Restroom: Yes - Water play: Yes - Accessible play: Yes ### [Mary Bartelme Park](https://ourplayday.com/places/mary-bartelme-park) Neighborhood: West Loop A one-block park where the way in is through five stainless steel gates that puff out a fine mist on hot days. The play area is accessible and built for inventing without standard equipment, the viewing hill rises six feet for a look at the skyline, and the sunken dog park has ramps and an oversized bowl that keeps filling itself. The seat walls hold terracotta salvaged from the infirmary that stood here, and [Skinner Park](https://ourplayday.com/places/skinner-park-playground) is about 900 meters west. - Water play: Yes - Accessible play: Yes ### [Ping Tom Memorial Park](https://ourplayday.com/places/ping-tom-memorial-park) Neighborhood: Chinatown A former rail yard on the South Branch of the river, turned into 17 acres of lawns with Chinese landscape design, a pagoda-style pavilion and a children's playground. The boathouse rents kayaks in summer and its dock is open to any non-motorized boat, and the paths run right along the water. The fieldhouse has an indoor pool with a zero-depth entry, the kind a two-year-old walks into. - Restroom: Yes - Swings: Yes ## The North Side ### [Oz Park](https://ourplayday.com/places/oz-park) Neighborhood: Lincoln Park Dorothy's Playlot is a fenced playground filled with things for little kids to climb, swing and run on, in a park built around The Wizard of Oz. Statues of the Tin Man, the Cowardly Lion, the Scarecrow and Dorothy with Toto stand around the 14 acres (the Scarecrow is seven feet tall and 800 pounds, so he isn't going anywhere), and the Emerald Garden is the flower garden. L. Frank Baum lived in Chicago, which is how the park got its name in 1976. [Lincoln Park Zoo](https://ourplayday.com/places/lincoln-park-zoo) is about a kilometer east. It's free, and the Pritzker Family Children's Zoo has a play forest with a log tower and a tunnel of sculpted metal vines, a play treehouse, and black bears, river otters and beavers in between. - Restroom: No - Fenced: Yes - Swings: Yes - Accessible play: Yes ### [Welles Park](https://ourplayday.com/places/welles-park) Neighborhood: Lincoln Square An accessible soft-surface playground from 2010 in the middle of Lincoln Square, with a nature play space at the Montrose and Western corner where kids climb, build and dig. The green wrought-iron gazebo on the west side is used for concerts and storytelling, and there's an indoor pool. Abe Saperstein, who went on to found the Harlem Globetrotters, started out coaching basketball in the fieldhouse here. [Winnemac Park](https://ourplayday.com/places/winnemac-park-playground), 1.4 kilometers north, has an accessible playground from 2008, a prairie garden and a nature trail. - Restroom: Yes - Water play: Yes - Swings: Yes - Accessible play: Yes ### [Indian Boundary Park](https://ourplayday.com/places/indian-boundary-park) Neighborhood: West Ridge A playground beside a lagoon full of ducks, a spray pool where the water comes out of dancing bears and misters, and a Nature Play Center for the outdoor, get-dirty kind of play. The 1929 Tudor fieldhouse is a city landmark and a cultural center with piano, dance and textile classes, and a small zoo ran here from the mid-1920s. The park is 13 acres and free, with a restored natural area next to the lagoon. - Restroom: Yes - Water play: Yes - Swings: Yes ### [River Park](https://ourplayday.com/places/river-park-albany-park) Neighborhood: Albany Park Two playgrounds, a water playground with sprays that runs in summer and a swimming pool, on 29 acres where the Chicago River meets the canal. The RiverLab boathouse has a free accessible launch for canoes and kayaks, there's fishing along the bank, and a turf field and running track fill the rest. - Restroom: Yes - Water play: Yes - Swings: Yes - Accessible play: Yes ## The Northwest Side ### [Portage Park](https://ourplayday.com/places/portage-park-playground) Neighborhood: Portage Park A new soft-surface accessible playground inside a 38-acre park with a water play area, an Olympic-size pool and a smaller heated one (the 1972 U.S. Olympic swimming trials were held in this pool). There's a nature walk, a bike path, an in-line skating slab and six tennis courts, and the prairie-style fieldhouse dates from 1922. - Restroom: Yes - Water play: Yes - Swings: Yes - Accessible play: Yes ### [The 606 (Walsh Park)](https://ourplayday.com/places/the-606-walsh-park) Neighborhood: West Town A playground, a field and basketball hoops on two acres at Ashland Avenue, where the Bloomingdale Trail, the heart of The 606, starts and ends. The park is named for John P. Walsh Jr., the firefighter who died after the 1970 fire on this block. [Dean Playground](https://ourplayday.com/places/dean-playground), about 800 meters south, has a small spray of its own. - Restroom: No - Fenced: Yes - Water play: Yes - Swings: Yes ## The South Side ### [Brighton Park Community Campus](https://ourplayday.com/places/brighton-park-community-campus) Neighborhood: Brighton Park Opened in June 2023 on 17 acres of old factory land, with a playground, a spray pool and a nature play space, two lit turf fields and a big lawn where the park runs concerts and movies. The round building is the Park District's own headquarters as well as the fieldhouse, with bathrooms inside. [McKinley Park](https://ourplayday.com/places/mckinley-park-playground-pool) is about two kilometers north, and the Western Avenue Orange Line station is next door to this one. - Restroom: Yes - Water play: Yes - Swings: Yes - Accessible play: Yes ### [McKinley Park](https://ourplayday.com/places/mckinley-park-playground-pool) Neighborhood: McKinley Park The kiddie pool is shallow and has a slide, and the playground was renovated in 2014, in a 72-acre park with a lagoon dotted with small wooded islands, a full swimming pool, a seasonal ice rink and a gymnastics center in the fieldhouse. The park was dedicated in 1902 as an experiment, a park with a swimming lagoon in the middle of the Stockyards neighborhoods, and it worked well enough that the South Side got a whole system of them. - Restroom: Yes - Water play: Yes - Accessible play: Yes ### [Bessemer Park](https://ourplayday.com/places/bessemer-park) Neighborhood: South Chicago An Olmsted Brothers park from 1905 with a playground, a water feature, a swimming pool, picnic groves and a boxing gym in the fieldhouse. It was one of the first ten of those South Side neighborhood parks, a mile from the steel mills it was named for (Sir Henry Bessemer perfected steelmaking), and 20 acres is enough room for a long afternoon. - Restroom: Yes - Water play: Yes - Swings: Yes - Accessible play: Yes ### [Rainbow Beach Park](https://ourplayday.com/places/rainbow-beach-park) Neighborhood: South Chicago Lakefront, 142 acres of it, with two playgrounds, a beach, a comfort station and the Rainbow Beach Dunes, one of the most ecologically important natural areas in the city. One of the playgrounds was built in 2015 under the Chicago Plays program, the 1999 fieldhouse was designed around the lake and skyline views, and the beach started as Rocky Ledge Beach in 1908, a children's beach for years. - Restroom: Yes - Swings: Yes - Accessible play: Yes ## Put it into a trip For a day-by-day plan that fits these around the museums and the lake, see [3 days in Chicago](https://ourplayday.com/guides/united-states/illinois/chicago/3-days-in-chicago). The bigger list is [Things to do in Chicago with kids](https://ourplayday.com/guides/united-states/illinois/chicago/things-to-do-with-kids), and where to sleep has its own guide: [The best family hotels in Chicago](https://ourplayday.com/guides/united-states/illinois/chicago/family-hotels). Page: https://ourplayday.com/guides/united-states/illinois/chicago/best-playgrounds