Jackson Park and The White City
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Jackson Park was the site of the World’s Columbian Exposition.
Chicago’s Jackson Park was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux – the men behind New York’s Central Park. They teamed up with Daniel Burnham to transform the park into the so-called "White City," a fairgoer’s fantasyland for the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition. Today, the Museum of Science and Industry is the only fair pavilion left in Jackson Park.
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Chicago Tours with Geoffrey Baer is a local public television program presented by WTTW
Jackson Park and The White City
Clip: Special | 2m 1sVideo has Closed Captions
Chicago’s Jackson Park was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux – the men behind New York’s Central Park. They teamed up with Daniel Burnham to transform the park into the so-called "White City," a fairgoer’s fantasyland for the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition. Today, the Museum of Science and Industry is the only fair pavilion left in Jackson Park.
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(light music) Just south of Promontory Point, Jackson Park is the grand dame of the South Lakefront.
It was designed in 1869 by the creators of New York's Central Park, Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux.
Olmsted and Vaux made water the unifying theme of Jackson Park, weaving lagoons and harbors through the landscape traversed by bridges.
But most of their plans were still on the drawing board, when the Great Fire of 1871 devastated Chicago.
The setback would last 20 years until the 1890s.
That's when Chicago won the bid to host the World's Columbian Exposition, and the city chose Jackson Park and the adjacent Midway Plaisance as the Fair's location.
Olmsted teamed up with Daniel Burnham, who was already one of the city's leading architects.
But this would be his first crack at the kind of large scale urban planning that became his legacy.
Olmsted and Burnham reimagined Jackson Park as a fairgoer's fantasy land.
But Burnham's Neoclassical White City was largely made of wood and plaster, a grand illusion never meant to last.
The only Fair pavilion left in Jackson Park is the Museum of Science and Industry, built solidly to withstand fire, since it was the Fair's palace of fine art housing priceless treasures.
Another legacy is the Garden of the Phoenix, Japan's contribution to the Fair on Olmsted's wooded Island.
It was rehabilitated in the 1990s with a gift from the city of Osaka.
And now it's the perfect place for a moment of Zen.
Breathe in.
Breathe out.
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Chicago Tours with Geoffrey Baer is a local public television program presented by WTTW