Beyond "A Century of Progress"

Chicago hosted its second world's fair, "A Century of Progress," from 1933 to 1934. The fair site spanned the lakefront from the current Museum Campus south to 35th Street. Now, 90 years after the fair's closure, these images capture some of this area's sometimes controversial history and how it has evolved, highlighting the underappreciated beauty of this waterfront parkland. This collection is based on my Chicago Photography Classes Photo 3 course project. All images were captured with an OM System OM-5 camera.

Adler Planetarium (1930) and Sky Pavilion (1999)

Northerly Island (1925)

Originally constructed as part of the 1909 Plan of Chicago, Northerly Island (a peninsula since 1938) was widened and converted into the city's lakefront airport (Meigs Field) in 1948. In a controversial maneuver in 2003, Mayor Richard M. Daley ordered the airport's runway disabled in the middle of the night using bulldozers. The island's southern end was converted into parkland in 2015.