The Barack Obama Presidential Library is a Blight on the Chicago Skyline
03 December 2025 • by Bob • Opinion, Rants, Politics
One of the things that I have always admired about Chicago during my visits there is its extensive system of truly great parks. Take a look at the following list that contains just a few of Chicago's lakeside parks to see what I mean:
- Lincoln Park - This is Chicago's largest park, which stretches along the North Side lakefront.
- Grant Park - An iconic downtown park, which is home to Buckingham Fountain, Chicago's Museum Campus, the Art Institute of Chicago, and is host to several popular festivals.
- Burnham Park - This park extends six miles along the lakefront and connects Grant Park to Jackson Park.
- Jackson Park - A historic South Side park, and site of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition.
- Calumet Park - Located at Chicago's southeastern edge and borders Indiana along the lake.
- Rainbow Beach Park - A South Side lakefront park with a popular beach.
- Montrose Harbor / Montrose Beach - A major recreational area on the North Side lakefront that is part of the Lincoln Park system.
The Chicago Park District manages over 600 parks, and I have always thought it amazing that Chicago's city planners had the foresight to devote much of the land that would have been prime real estate in other cities to create something of beauty that serves Chicago's citizenry. Despite a few missteps like the Meigs Field debacle, I have always considered Chicago to be one of the country's greatest cities and finest examples of how best to use hundreds of acres of public land to everyone's benefit.
However, Chicago's upcoming Barack Obama Presidential Center is a garish, vulgar atrocity that was plopped in the middle of the city's otherwise gorgeous Jackson Park. This architectural abomination is a gargantuan carbuncle that permanently sullies the city's skyline, which - like the Colossus of Nero in Ancient Rome - exists for the sole purpose of stoking the fires of a single man's vanity.
I realize that every president since FDR has erected some form of public edifice in recognition of their perceived contributions to society, and most of the presidential centers that are added to the Presidential Library System are modest dwellings that are tastefully designed and constructed. But Obama's monstrous, multistory memorial to himself is a particularly hideous engineering mutation that is so over-the-top that it seems he is intentionally trying to insult the good people of Chicago.
