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 |2022-12-10T09:57:14-06:00August 26th, 2022|Categories: NEWS, REPRINTS|Tags: , |0 Comments
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Changes Coming to Midway Plaisance

“Passing under the Stony Island viaduct, we are in a new world, which, while it does not pretend to instruct, still conveys quite an amount of real knowledge, though carefully enshrouded in a sugarcoating of amusement.” —“The World's Columbian Exposition, a View from the Ferris Wheel” Scientific American September 9, 1893, pp. 169 70. The Midway Plaisance, a six hundred-foot wide by one-mile-long strip of land connecting Jackson Park on the east to Washington Park on the west, served [...]

By |2022-04-01T15:30:11-05:00April 3rd, 2022|Categories: NEWS|Tags: , |0 Comments
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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 |2021-08-17T19:35:38-05:00August 17th, 2021|Categories: NEWS|Tags: , |0 Comments
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Footprint of the Obama Presidential Center in Jackson Park

Following a lengthy federal regulatory review, the Obama Presidential Center (OPC) is now preparing for its official groundbreaking in the fall of 2020, and the City of Chicago is beginning pre-construction work in Jackson Park. Updates on the OPC construction can be found at https://www.obama.org/updates/. The OPC campus has several components, all localized in the southwest corner of what was the fairgrounds for the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition. That space today has a track and football field, playground, bathroom [...]

By |2021-04-30T07:49:19-05:00April 29th, 2021|Categories: NEWS, Uncategorized|Tags: |1 Comment
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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 |2020-01-31T16:20:49-06:00February 2nd, 2020|Categories: NEWS|Tags: , , , , |0 Comments
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White City Archaeologist Featured in January 2019 issue of Chicago Magazine

The January 2019 issue of Chicago magazine features an article about the first official archaeological dig at the site of the 1893 World’s Columbian exposition. In “Stories in the Dirt,” Anne Ford interviews Rebecca Graff, Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Chair of the American Studies Program at Lake Forest College. Graff reflects on her personal connection to the 1893 World’s Fair and surmises on the historical artifacts possibly buried beneath the future site of the Obama Presidential Center. [...]

By |2019-01-03T16:48:45-06:00January 3rd, 2019|Categories: NEWS|Tags: , |0 Comments
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Oct. 13, 2018: “The History of Jackson Park” at Chicago Public Library

As part of the annual Chicago Open Archives program, the Chicago Public Library will open their collection on Saturday, October 13, for an event exploring the history of the city park that became home to the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition. “From Swampland to Presidential Center: The History of Jackson Park” will be held from 10 am to noon at the Harold Washington Library Center. CPL offers this description of the program: “Throughout many of Illinois's 200 years, Chicago's Jackson [...]

By |2022-07-08T10:00:29-05:00October 11th, 2018|Categories: EVENTS (past)|Tags: , , , |0 Comments
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History and Change in Jackson Park

The 2018-2019 class of Obama Foundation Scholars recently convened in Chicago. On one beautiful summer day, the scholars -- coming from places as far flung as Cameroon, India and Vietnam -- were provided with a history tour of Chicago’s South Side that included a visit to the former fairgrounds of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Jackson Park. The Obama Presidential Center hopes to move into the western side of the Lagoon. An Obama Foundation Scholar viewing a [...]

By |2023-08-05T08:33:58-05:00September 24th, 2018|Categories: NEWS|Tags: , |0 Comments
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Artifacts of the 1893 World’s Fair Unearthed in Jackson Park

The Chicago Tribune reports that archaeologists have unearthed artifacts of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Jackson Park. In late 2017, researchers working for the Illinois State Archaeological Survey excavated seven sites in the area of the proposed Obama Presidential Center (OPC). Dig locations were on the west side of Jackson Park as well as in the eastern edge of the Midway Plaisance, where a parking garage for the OPC was at the time planned but has since been scrapped. [...]

By |2022-04-29T18:38:28-05:00March 24th, 2018|Categories: NEWS|Tags: , , , , , |0 Comments
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Dominating Objects of Interest: Olmsted and Obama

“How much should the maxims of a 19th-century park designer tie the hands of a 21st-century president?” asks Edward McClelland in his piece “Olmsted vs. Obama: Inside the Pushback Against the Presidential Library” published this week by Chicago Magazine. A whimsical illustration by Graham Roumieu that accompanies the article shows of a ghostly zephyr of Frederick Law Olmsted, landscape architect of the 1893 World’s Fair, fretting over the fate of his beloved Jackson Park. The article summarizes the positions [...]

By |2019-01-22T18:42:33-06:00February 9th, 2018|Categories: NEWS|Tags: , , |0 Comments
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