Walking the Fairgrounds

One of my earliest childhood memories was of my family taking a trip up to Chicago. During that adventure out of Central Illinois, we went to the Museum of Science and Industry in Jackson Park. I can vividly recollect several exhibits: a tour through the gigantic plaster beating heart, fixating on the sliced up body used as ‘artwork’ in a stairwell, gazing at a golden pendulum swinging back and forth in a deep shaft, and viewing a fantasy “Vintage Car of the Future” spinning around on a dais in all its glory. I couldn’t believe my eyes and as we turned each corner there was something new and fantastic to behold. I never wanted to leave. After a long day and a a sad departure at closing time, our station wagon pulled away from that wonderland to go back home. As the ornate building got smaller and smaller in the view out of the back window, I had the sensation that I had just visited the center of the Universe.

Almost 40 years after that wondrous trip, Scott and I traveled to the south side of the Columbian Basin behind the MSI to attended a morning walk with Friends of the White City. We congregated with others a few hundred feet away from the back entrance to that same beautiful Beaux-Arts building that I had enjoyed as a child. Ray, our guide, gave us an excellent two hour tour of a land that existed entirely 125 years in the past. The virtual descriptions and the scope of the fairgrounds fascinated me beyond my imagination. I couldn’t comprehend how something so glorious could be built and then reduced to the rubble beneath our feet.

The visuals from that walk were ingrained in my mind. After the tour, I found myself researching books, periodicals, newspapers and websites to mentally re-create those buildings and exhibits from every angle. I began a quest to find high-resolution images and descriptions of the event to fill in the gaps. As I continue exploring this fascination, I hope to meet others who hold the same awe for the event that changes the history of Chicago and the world.

–Randy