Bughouse Square (901 N. Clark), also known as Washington Square Park, was the most celebrated open air free-speech center in the country, and still is Chicago’s oldest existing small park. (“Bughouse” is slang for mental health facilities in the early 20^th century.) Before it was established on September 4, 1842, the park was a cow path with a well where farmers could water their cattle.

From the 1910s to the mid-1960s, the park was home to soapbox orators, most from the revolutionary left (like Lucy Parsons, Ben Reitman, Martha Biegler, Kenneth Rexroth, Herbert Shaw the Cosmic Kid, the Sheridan Twins, and Cholly Wendorf), and the Dil Pickle Club. Members of the Industrial Workers of the World, the Proletarian Party, and the Revolutionary Workers League frequented the park, and in 1968, Chicago’s first Gay Pride March happened here.

Bughouse Square was added to the National Register of Historic Places on May 20, 1991. Every July, the Bughouse Square Committee continues to organize the Bughouse Square Debates, in partnership with the Newberry Library Book Sale.