Page 25 - (DK Eyewitness) Top 10 Travel Guides - Chicago

Museum of Science and Industry ❮❮ 23

THE MUSEUM’S ORIGINS

Built as the Palace of Fine TOP 10
Arts in 1893, the Museum of FEATURES OF THE
Science and Industry is the 1893 EXPOSITION
only building left from Daniel 1 First ever Ferris Wheel
Burnham’s “White City.” 2 Palace of Fine Arts
This was built for the World’s
Columbian Exposition, marking 3 Midway Plaisance, first
separate amusement area
the 400th anniversary (albeit at a world’s fair
one year late) of Christopher 4 Jackson Park,
Columbus’s arrival in the New land scaped by designer
World. Burnham, the Director Frederick Law Olmsted
Ferris of Works for the fair (see p43),
Wheel 5 Exotic Dancer “Little
commissioned architects like Egypt” in the “Streets of
Charles Atwood to create structures that Cairo” exhibit
would showcase the best in design, culture, 6 The nickname “Windy
and technology. The Field Museum (see City” was introduced
pp18–19) inhabited the building until the 1920s (see p113)
when it moved to its Museum Campus home. 7 A 1,500 lb (680 kg)
Sears Roebuck retail chief Julius Rosenwald chocolate Venus de Milo
then decided that a fortified palace, stripped 8 A 70-ft- (21-m-) high
to its steel frame and rebuilt in limestone, tower of light bulbs
would be the perfect home for a new museum 9 Floodlights used on
devoted to “industrial enlightenment” and US buildings for the first time
techno logical triumphs. The Museum launched 10 250,000 separate
around 1933 when Chicago hosted its next displays on show
World’s Fair, Century of Progress Exposition.
The Museum of
Science and
Industry building
started out as
the Palace of Fine
Arts in 1893.

Present-day Museum of Science and Industry building

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