The Palace of Fine Arts: Jackson Park's Last Great Building from the 1893 World's Fair

The 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Jackson Park was one of the most influential events in American history — it gave the world the Ferris wheel and Juicy Fruit gum, and showed off alternating current on a grand scale. It drew more than 27 million visitors. Almost every building was a temporary structure made of plaster and fiber, nicknamed "The White City." They were demolished or burned. Only one major fair building still stands in Jackson Park: the Palace of Fine Arts, a massive Beaux-Arts structure built to house the fair's art exhibitions. Because it contained irreplaceable artworks, it was built with a permanent brick substructure under its temporary facade. After the fair, it was used to house a collection that became the Field Museum, then sat deteriorating for decades. From the late 1920s to 1933, it was rebuilt in permanent stone and converted into the Museum of Science and Industry — now the Griffin Museum of Science and Industry, one of the largest science museums in the world. The building itself is the exhibit: standing inside, you're inside the ghost of a world's fair that shaped the modern age.