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On October 19th, 1874, Barnum's Hippodrome paid a visit to the site of the Union Grounds. There was a hot-air balloon wedding there and, it turns out, somebody illustrated it and that picture was published a month later. Unfortunately, the Union Grounds are not visible in the drawing. Whether or not it is under the huge tents of the circus or it had been dismantled by now, I'm not really sure. Still, this is the only thing I could find that shows what it looked like around the Union Grounds near the time it was in heavy use. Most photos and illustrations of the area are from a decade or more later. It appears that east of Freeman (and probably north of Kenner) was the boundary for any real development at that time in that area of the West End as this drawing is showing west of Freeman to the rear of Lincoln Park, looking southwest over Kenner street. As you can see, there isn't a whole lot there - many of the roads from the 1870 city plan map aren't even there at this point.
I've also attached an illustration of the entrance into Lincoln Park from Freeman that was drawn around the same time.
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