Biography

Julia S. Bachrach is an award-winning author, historian, preservationist, and urban planner. She served as historian and planning supervisor to the Chicago Park District for more than two decades. Her books include The City in a Garden: A History of Chicago’s Parks and Inspired by Nature: The Garfield Park Conservatory and Chicago’s West Side.  She contributed essays to AIA Guide to Chicago Architecture, Oxford Companion to the Garden, Midwestern Landscape Architecture, and Encyclopedia of Chicago. 

Her appearances on television, documentary films, and radio programs include 10 Great Parks That Changed America (PBS), Chicago Tonight (WTTW), Biking the Boulevards with Geoffrey Baer (WTTW), and Jens Jensen: The Living Green (Viva Lundin Productions) and Curious City (WBEZ).

Julia Bachrach teaches seminars at cultural institutions such as the Newberry Library.  She previously taught courses at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Illinois Institute of Technology.  She received the 2015 Distinguished Service Award from the American Institute of Architecture-Chicago and the 2009 National Stewardship Excellence Award from the Cultural Landscape Foundation.