Ralph Lopez has all sorts of Riverview memorabilia at home and operates a website at riverviewparkchicago.com. The park was closed on Mondays.
He loved working there and was clearing over $300 a week, good money back then.
Today, Lopez conducts tours of the site, which today has Riverview Plaza strip mall, the Chicago Police Belmont Area station, DeVry University and Richard Clark Park. At the south end of Clark Park in a wooded area by the river, there is a huge concrete foundation that was once part of the Shoot the Chutes tower where boats were dropped.
Rumors have it that racial tensions in 1967 led to the park's closing, primarily due to one of the park's rides, the African Dip, where patrons threw balls at a target trying to dunk a black man into a tank of water. This, however, was closed in the late '50s due to pressure from the black community.
Another possible reason was that the land had become too valuable. The park drew 1.7 million people in its last year of operation, 1967. Another theory has the changing North center neighborhood which had once been dominated by Germans, Italians and other European groups, but more minorities were moving in.
You can take a video tour of the Riverview at chicagotribune.com/riverview.
Back before Today's Same-Old, Same-Old Parks. --Cooter
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