- Just a short walk south from the frequent hustle and bustle of Grant Park, past popular attractions like the Field Museum, Shedd Aquarium, and Adler Planetarium is a lakefront gem where you can still truly get away from it all: Northerly Island.

Chicago has a lot of surprises, but I think this might be the biggest surprise in Chicago.

Now, the domain of birds and bees, the sky above Northerly Island was once filled with a different kind of air traffic.

(aircraft humming) We would literally be like flying in for a landing right now.

Stewart Hicks is an architecture professor.

- And there were a lot of people that did it, too.

It was a very, very busy airport.

- [Geoffrey Voiceover] From 1948 to 2003, Meigs Field was a rare bird, an airport for small planes right downtown and smack dab on the lakefront.

Meigs was even the default airport for Microsoft's flight simulator.

- [Simulator Narrator] Be careful, you're getting a little low.

- [Geoffrey Voiceover] Introducing millions of people throughout the world to Chicago's skyline.

- [Simulator Narrator] Wait a minute to extend the flaps.

- [Geoffrey Voiceover] Despite Meigs' iconic status, Mayor Richard M. Daley thought the island, which is really a peninsula, would better serve the public as a park.

Entanglements with the state blocked the mayor's plans.

But after the 9/11 attacks, Daley claimed an airport so close to downtown was a security threat.

In the middle of the night on March 31st, 2003, he launched a brigade of bulldozers and trackhoes.

- Well, we took appropriate steps to do it- - [Reporter] Why?

Why do it in the middle of the night?

- We made the decision and we did it for public safety.

- [Geoffrey Voiceover] Daley didn't tell City Hall, Springfield, or the Federal Aviation Administration.

It was just his word signed with an X.

- Some planes were stranded here, some couldn't get away.

But after that, this was no longer an airport.

- Strangely enough, Daley's strongman stunt brought Northerly Island closer to its original progressive idea, conceived by legendary urban planner, Daniel H. Burnham, he of "no little plans."

The lakefront was the crown jewel in Burnham's 1909 "Plan of Chicago."

He called for a string of manmade islands to protect the lakefront and create green space.

This was the only one ever built.

We would've seen a chain of islands down the shore, right?

- That's right.

So yeah, we've got the northern part of something that was meant to be much larger and would've framed a lagoon that would've also created a certain kind of framed nature or framed water that would've been accessible to people of Chicago.

- Who knows, maybe Daley had Burnham in mind when he ordered those bulldozers, because Burnham wrote "The Lake front by right belongs to the people."

- And that statement fills the minds of people's imagination.

People believe it should be for the people.

And so when they see a tower right on the water, people get a little maybe upset that it doesn't quite follow that vision.

- [Geoffrey Voiceover] Not many people use this park, which is still a work in progress decades after the demise of Meigs Field.

But it's worth a visit.

The lush landscape is bursting with wildflowers and native plants.

But what Burnham approved, on the one hand, he cherished open space and quiet as an antidote to the crowds and filth of late 19th century Chicago.

But Burnham couldn't help trying to improve upon nature, as though it would be even better with orderly design and classical symmetry.

Nature was a little too untidy for Burnham.

- (laughing) I think so.

Or the way we would think about it today, for sure.

- You might say Northerly Island is an updated Burnham, Burnham in Birkenstocks.

He might look at this today and just say, "What?

Who let this all go to weed?

Why is it all covered with weeds?

But they're wildflowers, they're native plants.

- Exactly, and other people today might come and think how beautiful it is that we've been able to accept these kinds of plantings and animals and things that would've been here otherwise, right next to and part of the City of Chicago.