Darrow Bridge, Fine Arts, Merchant Tailors Building

There’s so much to choose from when toddling around the Fair but I decided to focus on things that survive the Fair--at least in some form. 

This view has three surviving landmarks. The electric boats are heading under what we know as the Darrow Bridge toward the Palace of Fine Arts. The bridge was built by Burnham and Root before the Fair, so Olmsted repurposed it in the fair layout. The railing that the Chicago Park District and the Illinois Department of Transportation have neglected is the railing you see in this photo. The main entrance to the Fine Arts was here on the lagoon side, now the backside of the Museum of Science and Industry. 

So what’s the third? That “little” building on the left was the Merchant Tailors Building, put up by the guild to celebrate their craft. It is based on a building on the Acropolis in Athens. It was designed by Solon S. Beman. And when Timothy Blackstone’s will called for building a library, his widow Isabella hired Beman and they agreed that this should be the model as a call back to the Fair and Athens. So when you go to the Blackstone Library, you see a bit of the Fair. Even more so, the murals in the library rotunda are meant to capture the murals of the fair so you can see the kind of decoration the buildings had inside.