Norwood Circle Park, nestled in what is now the Norwood Park neighborhood, dates to just after the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. Five years earlier, the Norwood Land and Building Association had purchased property northwest of Chicago and platted the new Village of Norwood, with its unusual Circle Avenue. The developers named their village for the 1867 novel Norwood, written by clergyman and abolitionist Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887). When local development surged after the Fire, a 3-acre triangular site along Circle Avenue was set aside as parkland. Twenty years later, the City of Chicago annexed the village and took control of Norwood Circle Park. By 1909, the wooded triangle was the responsibility of the city's Special Parks Commission. The city transferred Norwood Circle Park to the Chicago Park District in 1959.