The Obama Presidential Center Wants to Be Everything But a Library

The Obama Presidential Center in Chicago’s Jackson Park (Talia Sprague/Bloomberg).

You have surely seen it by now: the 225-foot-tall “Obamalisk,” a four-sided, granite-faced tower, faceted to bulge at the middle, with a multi-story stained glass window on its north face and the opening lines of President Barack Obama’s 2015 speech in Selma, Alabama, “You Are America,” cut from stone and wrapping around its southwestern corner. The building is the largest and most visible piece of the Obama Presidential Center, a $850 million, 19.3-acre campus on the South Side of Chicago set to open to the public on June 19.

Along with the towering museum, the campus includes a reconstructed Women’s Garden on the site of the 1893 World’s Fair Women’s Building; the low-lying Forum with its auditorium, recording studio, restaurant and shop; gardens that highlight native flora and a playground with climbing structures of native fauna; a freestanding Chicago Public Library branch; and, clearly dear to the ball-knowing former president’s heart, Home Court, which features an NBA regulation-size court and other gym facilities.