Glessner House is hosting a talk on “The Vanishing City: Excavating the World’s Fair of 1893” on Sunday, October 13, 2019, from 4-5 pm.

Rebecca Graff, assistant professor of anthropology and chair of the American studies at Lake Forest College, divulges what is hiding beneath the future Obama Presidential Center site in Chicago. Professor Graff will discuss her archaeological and archival research focused on the Fair’s ephemeral “White City” and Midway Plaisance. The results of the excavation in Jackson Park revealed a robust archaeological signature of the extensive sanitary infrastructure of the Fair and, surprisingly, delicate plaster remains of the Fair’s Ohio State Building. Graff’s work links the Fair, as a catalyst for structural change and its material record, to the larger social structures of late nineteenth century America.

Glessner House is located at 1800 S. Prairie Avenue in Chicago. Tickets for the presentation are $10 per person ($8 for Glessner House members).

The Ohio Building, remnants of which are buried under Jackson Park. [Image from The Dream City. A Portfolio of Photographic Views of the World’s Columbian Exposition. N. D. Thompson, 1893.]