“Jackson Park was born over the furious objections of Chicagoans”

“Jackson Park was born over the furious objections of Chicagoans,” writes Chicago Sun-Times columnist Neil Steinberg [Full story: https://chicago.suntimes.com/columnists/2026/06/12/obama-presidential-center-jackson-park-history-worlds-columbian-exposition-frederick-law-omsted] Prompted by the opening of the Obama Presidential Center, Steinberg reviews some of the controversies in the long history of Jackson Park, from its 1869 founding to its 1881 renaming to its 1890 selection as the fairgrounds for the World’s Columbian Exposition. Several private organizations have moved onto parkland since then, with the newest bring a fresh round of opposition [...]

By Scott|2026-06-12T15:59:46-05:00June 12th, 2026|Categories: NEWS|Tags: , , |0 Comments
Read More

Sep. 19, 2025-Feb. 28, 2026: “Traces” hints at the White City in Jackson Park

Buildings from the 1893 World’s Fair have been reconstructed in Jackson Park. Sort of. A view of "Traces" looking north from the Griffin Museum of Science and Industry, a campus once home to the State Buildings of the 1893 World's Fair. For the past decade, the Chicago Architectural Biennial (CAB) has brought many fascinating, provocative, and engaging installations by architects, artists, and designers to sites around the city. This year’s show, SHIFT: Architecture in Times of Radical [...]

By Scott|2025-09-21T09:52:11-05:00September 21st, 2025|Categories: EVENTS, EXHIBITS (current)|Tags: , |0 Comments
Read More

Apr. 26, 2025: Help clean up Jackson Park (Chicago)

Jackson Park is hallowed ground for 1893 World’s Fair enthusiasts. To honor Earth Day, Friends of the Parks is sponsoring a clean-up day in Jackson Park and other Chicago parks on Saturday, April 26, 2025. This marks the 40th anniversary of Friends of the Parks’ citywide Earth Day cleanups. Whether you love spending time in Jackson Park or have never before visited, we invite you to join us on a team of volunteers to clean up Jackson Park East. [...]

By Scott|2025-05-23T16:45:20-05:00March 27th, 2025|Categories: EVENTS (past)|Tags: , |0 Comments
Read More

Sep. 15, 2024: “Walking the White City” tour (Chicago)

The Glessner House is offering a "Walking the White City" tour of the former fairgrounds of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition on Sunday, September 15, 2024, from 10 AM to noon. Architect and historian John Waters will guide participants on a walking tour of Jackson Park to see the sites of landmarks of the 1893 World's Fair, explore the fascinating vestiges, and learn how the Fair influenced the design of Jackson Park as we know it today. The tour [...]

By Scott|2024-09-23T08:17:36-05:00August 18th, 2024|Categories: EVENTS (past)|Tags: , |0 Comments
Read More

Sept. 10, 2023: “Walking the White City” tour (Chicago)

The Glessner House is offering a "Walking the White City" tour of the former fairgrounds of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition on Sunday, September 10, 2023, from 10 AM to noon. Architect and historian John Waters will guide participants on a walking tour of Jackson Park to see the sites of landmarks of the 1893 World's Fair, explore the fascinating vestiges, and learn how the Fair influenced the design of Jackson Park as we know it today. The tour [...]

By Scott|2023-12-17T08:09:50-06:00July 15th, 2023|Categories: EVENTS (past)|Tags: , |0 Comments
Read More

Jackson Park oak trees uprooted and destroyed (redux)

Some Chicago residents are expressing outrage about the number of mature trees being cut down in Jackson Park due to construction of the Obama Presidential Center (and possibly more for coming down for a planned golf course). More people than you think, perhaps, will be sorry that it has been destroyed. Many years ago, some Chicagoan were distressed by all the trees being chopped down in Jackson Park in order to construct the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition fairgrounds. This [...]

By Scott|2022-12-10T09:57:14-06:00August 26th, 2022|Categories: NEWS, REPRINTS|Tags: , |0 Comments
Read More

Sept. 11, 2022: “Walking the White City” tour (Chicago)

The Glessner House is offering a "Walking the White City" tour of the former fairgrounds of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition on Sunday, September 11, 2022, from 10 AM to noon. Architect and historian John Waters will guide participants on a walking tour of Jackson Park to see the sites of landmarks of the 1893 World's Fair, explore the fascinating vestiges, and learn how the Fair influenced the design of Jackson Park as we know it today. The tour [...]

By Scott|2022-10-10T08:06:54-05:00August 11th, 2022|Categories: EVENTS (past)|Tags: , |0 Comments
Read More

Olmsted’s Three Visions for Jackson Park

The National Association for Olmsted Parks has posted a fascinating look at "Olmsted’s Three Visions for Jackson Park" by Julia Bachrach. She explores the designs by Frederick Law Olmsted for South Park in 1871, the fairgrounds of the World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893, and return of Jackson Park in 1895. Construction in 1891 of the fairgrounds for the 1893 World's Fair.

By Scott|2022-08-11T15:41:18-05:00July 17th, 2022|Categories: NEWS|Tags: , |0 Comments
Read More

Changes to Jackson Park 1893-2021

Construction in and around the Obama Presidential Center site in Jackson Park began on Monday, August 16. The long-delayed project on 19.3 acres of Jackson Park is set to be completed in 2025. In April, we posted a static map showing the "Footprint of the Obama Presidential Center in Jackson Park" and have now posted a YouTube video showing Jackson Park from 1893 World's Fair to Obama Presidential Center https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzbmUTu3Pf8

By Scott|2021-08-17T19:35:38-05:00August 17th, 2021|Categories: NEWS|Tags: , |0 Comments
Read More

Sept. 12, 2021: “Walking the White City” tour (Chicago)

The Glessner House is offering a "Walking the White City" tour of the former fairgrounds of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition on Sunday, September 12, 2021, from 10 AM to noon. Architect and historian John Waters will guide participants on a walking tour of Jackson Park to see the sites of landmarks of the 1893 World's Fair, explore the fascinating vestiges, and learn how the Fair influenced the design of Jackson Park as we know it today. The tour [...]

By Scott|2022-03-05T11:04:20-06:00August 12th, 2021|Categories: EVENTS (past)|Tags: |0 Comments
Read More

Dec. 2 2020: “Building Chicago’s Public Spaces with Julia Bachrach” (online)

The Chicago Public Library, in partnership with the Chicago Architecture Center, will host an online presentation on "Building Chicago’s Public Spaces" by Chicago parks historian Julia Bachrach. The talk on Wednesday, December 2, from 6-7 pm, is free but registration is required: https://chipublib.bibliocommons.com/events/5f9c4a02e085ab5c2caf057d Bachrach will highlight two major architectural themes in park history: the Museum of Science and Industry—built as the Palace of Fine Arts for the World’s Columbian Exposition—and the fieldhouse, an influential building type invented in Chicago. She will [...]

By Scott|2023-01-12T20:31:15-06:00November 12th, 2020|Categories: EVENTS (past)|Tags: , , , |0 Comments
Read More

Eight Famous Parks Designed by Frederick Law Olmsted

"8 Famous Parks Designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, Plus a Tiny One You May Not Know About" by Wendy Bowman reviews many of the great works by landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, who died on this day in 1903. Included are the fairgrounds of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition and the adjacent (and often overlooked) Washington Park in Chicago. Olmsted & Vaux’s 1871 South Park Plan (from the Chicago Park District).

By Scott|2020-08-29T09:33:31-05:00August 28th, 2020|Categories: NEWS|Tags: , , |0 Comments
Read More

Chicago00 Launches 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition VR Web Portal

Grab your Columbian Exposition return pass and head back to the 1893 World’s Fair virtually with the Chicago 00 Project, which has launched their 1893 World's Columbian Exposition VR web portal at https://1893.chicago00.org/. A partnership between the Chicago History Museum and filmmaker Geoffrey Alan Rhodes, the Chicago 00 Project has been producing a series of interactive multimedia experiences using historical images of important sites and events in Chicago. Their augmented reality app allows participant to overlay historic photos with [...]

By Scott|2020-06-29T10:42:24-05:00June 29th, 2020|Categories: NEWS|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , |0 Comments
Read More

Frederick Law Olmsted’s 1893 Report to the American Institute of Architects

Equaling or surpassing the grandeur of the White City palaces were the awesome scenic grounds of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition. The eminent landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, who had laid out New York's Central Park and the Chicago suburb of Riverside, transformed Jackson Park (“the least park-like ground within miles of the city”) into a garden of stunning beauty enjoyed by tens of millions of visitors. In this report to the American Institute of Architects (published The American [...]

By Scott|2020-04-26T15:18:28-05:00April 26th, 2020|Categories: REPRINTS|Tags: , , , , |0 Comments
Read More

Updates on Plans for the Obama Presidential Center in Jackson Park

The 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition emerged from an idea to a White City on the lake in a little more than three years. Building the Obama Presidential Center (OPC) along one edge of Jackson Park certainly will take much longer—if it materializes in that location at all. “The Obama Foundation first announced its site in Jackson Park back in 2016 and hoped to break ground in late 2018 after gaining city approvals that spring.” reports Curbed Chicago. “Two years [...]

By Scott|2020-01-31T16:20:49-06:00February 2nd, 2020|Categories: NEWS|Tags: , , , , |0 Comments
Read More

Frederick Law Olmsted and the Spark of Genius

The Wooded Island in the fairgrounds of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition. On the anniversary of the death of Frederick Law Olmsted (April 26, 1822 – August 28, 1903), we endeavor that the memory of his name and personality is not dimmed in the passage of years. This tribute to Olmsted’s design of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition comes from the May 3, 1893, issue of Garden and Forest, written just after Opening Day on the fairgrounds. In [...]

By Scott|2019-08-17T13:03:52-05:00August 28th, 2019|Categories: REPRINTS|Tags: , |1 Comment
Read More

White City Walking Tours 2019

There is something magical about walking through Jackson Park and thinking about how this was the center of the world for six months in 1893. On the surface there is little left of the White City, except for the some of the main landscaping features and a rebuilt Art Palace that now serves as the Museum of Science and Industry. But with an expert tour guide, the grandeur of the Dream City on the Lake resurfaces in the mind’s [...]

By Scott|2025-10-29T16:46:13-05:00May 10th, 2019|Categories: EVENTS (past)|Tags: |0 Comments
Read More

Restored Map of Jackson Park Before the 1893 World’s Fair

To celebrate the American Library Association’s Preservation Week (April 21-27, 2019), the Chicago Public Library has posted some remarkable photographs of their conservation work on a very fragile map of Jackson Park before the 1893 World’s Fair. Portion of an 1885 map showing the “General Plan for the Jackson Park Shore Protection.” [Image from the Chicago Public Library.] The “General Plan for the Jackson Park Shore Protection” was drawn for the South Park Commissioners in 1885, five years before [...]

By Scott|2019-04-16T09:57:01-05:00April 21st, 2019|Categories: NEWS|Tags: |0 Comments
Read More

Columbian Exposition Books from 2018

The 125th anniversary year of the World’s Columbian Exposition offered scholarship, images, and fiction relating to the World’s Fair in several new publications in 2018. Pioneers of Promotion: How Press Agents for Buffalo Bill, P. T. Barnum, and the World’s Columbian Exposition Created Modern Marketing by Joe Dobrow. University of Oklahoma Press. Communications professional and business history writer Joe Dobrow traces the origins of modern American marketing by shining the spotlight on three men: pioneers of promotion John M. [...]

By Scott|2024-10-27T12:19:09-05:00January 5th, 2019|Categories: FICTION, PRODUCTS, RESEARCH|Tags: , , , , , , , , , |0 Comments
Read More

Dec. 9, 2018: Hyde Park Historical Society book discussion (Chicago)

On Sunday, December 9, the Hyde Park Historical Society will host Chicago Historian Andrew Taylor Call, who will discuss his new book Chicago: A Civic, Industrial, and Familial History. Among the many topic covered in his book are the construction technologies used to build the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair and the social and civic development of Jackson Park. The event runs from 11 am to 2 pm at 5529 Lake Park Blvd. Light Refreshments will be served; copies of [...]

By Scott|2022-03-05T11:15:38-06:00December 2nd, 2018|Categories: EVENTS (past)|Tags: , |0 Comments
Read More
Copyright 2026 WorldsFairChicago1893 | All Rights Reserved |
Go to Top