Reading · Wandering Down the Rabbit Holes of History

Many people are coming to Jackson Park to see the Obama Presidential Center. There are a number of other spots there with interesting histories. This is going to be a set of links to the story behind the locations. I’ll be posting more detail by topic in the next few days, but this is the whole walking tour of things I’ve written about.

Part I, the 1893 Palace of Fine Arts (and why it is where it is and looks the way it does)

Part II, the Field Columbian Museum (and the origin of the Field Museum in Grant Park)

Part III, the Museum of Science and Industry, now renamed after donor Ken Griffin (why it was reconstructed in stone as a beloved memory of the fair, how Julius Rosenwald got involved, and the vision of the director who made it famous)

Japanese Garden 1 — The Japanese Tea House (located where the current open pavilion stands) is on the left. Standing in the garden is one of the Japanese-American waitresses dressed in a kimono. The original stroll garden was more densely planted.

Part I, the Japanese presence at the 1893 World’s Fair and the creation of the Japanese Garden after the 1933-1934 World’s Fair.

Part II, the destruction and resurrection of the Japanese Garden after World War II

Wooded Island is a sand ridge with a bur oak savannah that gives a slight sense of the landscape that originally on the South Side of Chicago

The creation and preservation of the central symbol of the 1893 World’s Fair—the Statue of the Republic

A caravel boat on Lake Michigan beside La Rabida, a reproduction of the monastery from where Columbus set sail to the New World, at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition. To the right, is an “ethnographic display” of teepees. Simon Pokagon, a Potawatomi leader who spoke at several events and published a pamphlet, strongly objected. He also pointed out that the Potawatomi had not ceded the riparian rights to the lakefront. W.H. Jackson, Chicago History Museum

The original wall from 1893 and the stone of a Silurian coral reef and how a Children’s Hospital ended up in Jackson Park named for a convent in Spain

How the Cold War took over the park and then turned into a natural area

Natural Areas and Missile Bases

Jun 8

I’m working up a “walking tour” post of sites to see in Jackson Park, now that folks might be visiting the Obama Presidential Center. There are many other things to see! They are all sites I’ve written up except this one—Bobolink Meadow Nature Area, which rests on top of the remains of Missile Base C41, a relic of the Cold War. I hadn’t written about it

This needs to be a much bigger memorial. I was hoping the OPC would care about this and the playground dedicated to Earl B. Dickerson.

The monument celebrates the presence of Frederick Douglass at the Fair and the attempts he and Ida B. Wells made to draw attention to the rise of Jim Crow and bitter racism in the United States

The World’s Fair meant many things to many people. This is the story of how the Norway Pavilion meant national pride that transcended 100 years.

The bridge as it looked in 1891 with the original railings designed by Burnham and Root. Chicago Park District

The oldest man-made structure in the park, created by Daniel Burnham before the Fair, preserved in every redesign of the park because it was an essential feature of Frederick Law Olmsted’s design. How it got its name. And unfortunately, it’s long neglect.

The current pavilion, newly restored, dates from the 1930s, but it carries the memory of Daniel Burnham’s vision for the park before the fair and the memory of the fair.

Jackson Park Pavilion, 1905-1906. This photo provides a clear look at the paved beach, which stretched from 56th Street to 67th Street. A short stretch of the granite pavers can still be seen just north of the 63rd Street Beach. They were unearthed when the concrete revetment was being poured. University of Chicago Library, Special Collections

I wrote a focused history on the Windermere here

But I put it on the tour because it shows how something big in the park can transform a neighborhood. After the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition left huge luxury hotels behind, Hyde Park became a very different place, which is clearer in this Substack:

Hyde Park History

The Windermere Hotel

January 15, 2025

I’m working on a Herald article focused on the Windermere Hotel though more as a look at the life going on in the grand residential hotels of Hyde Park, of which there were many. The district had sprung up for the 1893 World’s Fair, but it survived and expanded into the early 20th Century.

I did a focused article for the Herald here. But I found his story fascinating so did a lot of Substack posts to tell his story in detail. Links in the Jackson Park Rights and Politics post.

I realized after I made the map that people would be walking by a part of the Civil Rights and Women’s Movement that Hyde Park is famous for—the mural movement. The last of William Walker’s murals that exist in Hyde Park is at the 56th Street underpass—a hope for the future. His children attended Bret Harte across the street.

There was a long-neglected bench dedicated to two beloved women who fought for the right to vote. The bench is by the tracks. The women then tried to demonstrate how women’s votes might make life better for others. Luckily, the bench has been restored.

The Obama Presidential Center opening isn’t the first gathering of Democratic Party supporters at 61st and Stony Island.

Hyde Park History

Our Neighborhood National Convention

August 19, 2024

Chicago has been the host of many political conventions and Hyde Park has been connected to at least three of the famous ones. The first was 1860 and the Republican convention that nominated Abraham Lincoln. Hyde Park was a central location of Lincoln supporters and even his friends and associates. In addition, the very new Hyde Park Hotel, billed as a …

Exploring Jackson Park (overview)

Natural Areas and Missile Bases

The Windermere Hotel

Our Neighborhood National Convention

Comments