Museum of Science and Industry (Chicago)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Jump to: navigation, search
The Museum of Science and Industry is housed in the only in-place surviving building from the 1893 World Columbian Exposition and is a National Historic Landmark.
Enlarge
The Museum of Science and Industry is housed in the only in-place surviving building from the 1893 World Columbian Exposition and is a National Historic Landmark.

The Museum of Science and Industry is located in Chicago, Illinois in Jackson Park, in the Hyde Park neighborhood. It is housed in the only in-place surviving building from the 1893 World Columbian Exposition, the former Fine Arts Building.

The building, which was intended to be a more permanent structure than the other Exposition buildings, initially housed the Field Museum of Natural History. When a new Field Museum building opened closer to the downtown in 1921, the former site was left vacant.

After a few years, the building was selected as the site for a new science museum, by wealthy department-store owner Julius Rosenwald, who insisted his name not appear on the building. The building's exterior was re-cast in stone, retaining its 1893 Beaux Arts look, while the interior was completely rebuilt in Art Deco style. In 1933, while Chicago was hosting the Century of Progress, the new Museum of Science and Industry was opened to the public.

In keeping with Rosenwald's vision, many of the exhibits are interactive, ranging from the Hall of Communications which explains telephony, to the coal mine, which re-creates a mine inside the museum. The museum houses the U-505, the only German submarine captured by the US in World War II, silent film actress Colleen Moore's Fairy Castle and the Transportation Zone which includes exhibits on air and land transportation. The first diesel-powered streamlined stainless-steel trainset, Pioneer Zephyr, is on permanent display.

The Henry Crown Space Center at the Museum of Science and Industry includes the Apollo 8 capsule which took Frank Borman, James Lovell and William Anders on the first lunar orbital mission. Other exhibits include an OmniMax theater, Scott Carpenter's Mercury Atlas 7 capsule, a Lunar Module trainer and a life-size mockup of a space shuttle.

In addition to its three floors of standing exhibits, the Museum of Science and Industry also hosts temporary and traveling exhibits. In 2000, it created and hosted the largest display of relics from the wreck of Titanic. It also hosted Gunther von Hagens' Body Worlds exhibit, a view into the human body through use of plastinated human specimens.

The museum is known for unique and quirky permanent exhibits, such as a walk-through model of the human heart. Due to its age and design, the museum building itself has become a museum piece.

See also

External links

Personal tools