As a longtime Democrat, I am required to pluck down the $30 admission fee, buy the overpriced merchandise and pay cultlike homage to the new $850 million Obama Presidential Center, aka Barack’s Rock.
I am to praise all the imagined benefits it will provide to Chicago’s South Side. And always to honor what, in comparison to what we suffer at the present, was a fairly successful presidency.
But I’m not there yet. Neither are some of the critics.
“A defensive bunker” is how the architecture and design critic for The Guardian described it.
From some angles, it’s “cold and forbidding,” a New York Times critic wrote, adding, “Standing just below it in Jackson Park, the tower looms like a castle keep, its mass and height in tension with the park’s pastoral beauty and origins.”
The 225-foot granite monolith that towers over my beloved Jackson Park, on Chicago’s South Side where I was raised, is an assault on my senses and a visible blot on my city’s landscape. (Note: President Trump’s planned golden arch will be 250 feet in height, or 25 feet taller than Obama’s rock of ages. Hmm, is this one of those macho male throw-downs? My edifice wreck is bigger than your edifice wreck?)
I attended Bret Harte Elementary, on 56th Street, directly across from the northernmost reaches of Jackson Park. At lunch, my buddies and I would play Civil War in the park, the North versus the South. We stalked the bridle path in search of change that fell out of the riders’ pockets.
If I had any money for lunch (almost never), I would head kitty-corner from Bret Harte to Ed’s Lunch, a wooden fire-hazard of a shack on Stony Island, for a hot dog, chips and maybe a Pay Day candy bar.
I was also a “patrol boy,” holding up traffic so my classmates could safely cross the small intersection at the historic Hotel Windermere’s parking garage. There was nothing valiant about my volunteer service. Instead, I could leave school 15 minutes early to man my post. The majestic Windermere was where some of my beloved White Sox lived. I met Gary Peters and Joe Horlen there, still a thrilling memory.
My pack of kids once were entertained by a noseless man. He sat facing us at a picnic table in the park. Although he reeked of wine and his clothes were soiled, he seemed content and centered, not at all like our squirmy, odorous tribe of preteen boys.
Our guy lived in our park and even smoked, an activity many of us were desperate to try. He blew the smoke out the two brown holes above his mouth, proving that his respiratory system still worked.
Jackson Park was our urban wilderness. We spent every free moment roaming among its overgrown shrubs and towering trees. Lake Michigan shimmered to the east, beyond Promontory Point and the nearby battery of Nike Hercules missiles. Much later I heard that it was possible that some of those missiles had live nuclear warheads on their tips, and that 200 trees were cut down to make room for them.
The Chicago American boasted of the missiles: “A ring of sword-like guided missiles called the Nike — revealed for the first time today — stands ready to send sudden death belting into the sky to meet any enemy head on.”
We related to Jackson Park at a kids’ ground level, a 550-acre playground. The tallest building was the Museum of Science and Industry, where we fantasized about sneaking in after hours and having all the exhibits to ourselves. I would have headed right to the coal mine. Or the submarine. Or the model train set.
But this too-tall jagged thing poking up like a jagged tooth — what is it doing in my park?
Is this what Frederick Olmsted and Calvert Vaux had in mind when, in 1871, they designed the park? In Robin Bachin’s book “Building the South Side,” the author quotes Olmsted regarding these public spaces — that they contain “the beauty of the fields, the meadow, the prairie, of the green pastures and the still waters. What we want to gain is the tranquility and rest to the mind.”
When I see the “Obamalisk” towering over the South Side like a Giza-like homage to a pharaoh, I think that our next “No Kings” rally might warrant an addition.
Stephen J. Lyons is the author of six books of essays and journalism, including “Going Driftless,” this fall’s Regional Read for Wisconsin’s Winding Rivers Library System. He has a newsletter on Substack, “The Revolution Starts Here.”