Jackson Park (Chicago) in the context of Prairie restoration

The World's Columbian Exposition, also known as the Chicago World's Fair, was a world's fair held in Chicago from May 1 to October 31, 1893, to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's arrival in the New World in 1492. The centerpiece of the Fair, held in Jackson Park, was a large water pool representing the voyage that Columbus took to the New World. Chicago won the right to host the fair over several competing cities, including New York City, Washington, D.C., and St. Louis. The exposition was an influential social and cultural event and had a profound effect on American architecture, the arts, American industrial optimism, and Chicago's image.

The layout of the Chicago Columbian Exposition was predominantly designed by John Wellborn Root, Daniel Burnham, Frederick Law Olmsted, and Charles B. Atwood. It was the prototype of what Burnham and his colleagues thought a city should be. It was designed to follow Beaux-Arts principles of design, namely neoclassical architecture principles based on symmetry, balance, and splendor. The color of the material generally used to cover the buildings' façades, white staff, gave the fairgrounds its nickname, the White City. Many prominent architects designed its 14 "great buildings". Artists and musicians were featured in exhibits and many also made depictions and works of art inspired by the exposition. One particularly notable attraction was the world's first ferris wheel, standing at a height of 264 feet, which was designed to rival the Eiffel Tower built for the 1889 World's Fair four years earlier.

The Midway Plaisance, known locally as the Midway, is a public park on the South Side of Chicago, Illinois. It is one mile long by 220 yards wide and extends along 59th and 60th streets, joining Washington Park at its west end and Jackson Park at its east end. It divides the Hyde Park community area to the north from the Woodlawn community area to the south. Near Lake Michigan, the Midway is about 6 miles (10 km) south of the downtown "Loop". The University of Chicago had been established just north of the park, and university buildings now front the Midway to the south, as well.

Intended as part of the Chicago boulevard system, the park came to prominence when the Midway was laid out to host popular amusements at the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893, which hosted the world's first Ferris Wheel, later lending its name, "midway", to areas at county and state fairs and amusement parks with sideshows. The park is also featured as one of the main settings in the book The Devil in the White City written by Erik Larson. Landscaped with long vistas and avenues of trees at the start of the 20th century, the Midway in part followed the vision of its designer Frederick Law Olmsted, one of the creators of New York City's Central Park, but without his proposed feature of a Venetian canal down the Midway's center linking the lagoon systems of Jackson and Washington parks. Instead, the Midway is landscaped with a fosse, lawn covered depression, where the canal would have been, although in the winter parts of the grounds are turned over for ice skating. The Midway Plaisance has a variety of different elements for visitors to explore, including lakes, trails, bridges, and fields. Today, the park hosts many different programs, including: concerts, ice skating lessons, movie nights, and many other events.

The Museum of Science and Industry (MSI; formally Kenneth C. Griffin Museum of Science and Industry since 2024) is a private, non-profit science museum located in Jackson Park, the Hyde Park neighborhood, Chicago, Illinois. It is adjacent to Lake Michigan and the University of Chicago campus.

The museum is housed in the Palace of Fine Arts from the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition. Initially endowed by Sears, Roebuck and Company president and philanthropist Julius Rosenwald and supported by the Commercial Club of Chicago, it opened in 1933 during the Century of Progress Exposition. It was renamed for benefactor and financier Kenneth C. Griffin on May 19, 2024.