La Rabida and How the Hospital Got Its Name

 

I decided to stick with a theme of things that outlasted the Fair—in this case a name and a seawall. The designers built a peninsula into the lake to shelter the harbor where the three caravels would be, using the bedrock at the surface of the lake there.

 


When the countries were staking out Fair real estate, Spain seized the prominent point facing the lake for its life-size replica of the Franciscan monastery of Santa María de la Rábida, where Columbus took refuge in 1486. 
 

 

It held 400-year-old Columbiana, advertised as some of the most valuable objects at the Fair--letters from Columbus to Queen Isabella, a 1529 map of the world—and described since as having “dubious authenticity.” Most of the diaries I’ve seen thought the exhibit was a bore. The building is visually arresting on its high point because it was severely plain when everything else at the Fair was ornate. It’s also where folks could get some cool lake air without much of a crowd. 
 
 
After the Fair was over, the Spanish Consulate donated the building to Chicago for a fresh air sanitorium for children. The urban diseases of typhoid, diphtheria, and scarlet fever were the first mission. A women’s board raised the money so that La Rabida could be open to children “regardless of race, religion, or ability to pay.” By 1910, the building was not in good shape and the child health services moved to other city locations. 
 

1910. Chicago Daily News photo



When the building burned in 1922, the board decided to move back and rebuild—with a Spanish tile roof as a nod to the original. More buildings were built over the decades but the name stayed. The seawalls from 1893 are still there, on the peninsula, though in bad shape with the recent lake damage. You can walk out there to take a look (the fossils in the bedrock south of it are also very cool).