People are seen walking among the sheep in Washington Park in the early 1900s. Postcard provided by the Newberry Library in Chicago. Publisher is unknown. Counting sheep to fall asleep can be difficult for some people, but a visit to Washington Park in the early part of the 20 th century helped make the task simple. The 380-acre park, at the 5500 block of Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, once had a herd of sheep there to graze and keep the grass short in a meadow area. Several postcards were printed at the time showing sheep grazing and people walking among them. The park district took the sheep out of the park in 1920. The park was built around 1880 and designed by famed landscape architects Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux. Sheep graze in Washington Park. Postcard Published by S.M. Knox & Co, Germany. The designers wanted to preserve some of the open space there to include a prairie-based design. The sheep grazing area was called the South Open Gree