Museum of Science and Industry (Palace of Fine Arts)

The Museum of Science and Industry at 5700 S DuSable Lake Shore Drive, in Jackson Park in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois, occupies the former Palace of Fine Arts, the only major building from the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition to survive in place. Designed by Charles B. Atwood in the Beaux-Arts style, the palace was built to hold the fair's art exhibits and, like most of the fair's White City, was constructed of plaster-and-fiber staff over a steel frame, meant to last only a short time. It was later converted to the Field Columbian Museum, and when that collection moved to a new building in 1920, the structure fell into disrepair. Philanthropist Julius Rosenwald, head of Sears, Roebuck and Company, funded a rebuilding in the late 1920s and early 1930s in durable Indiana limestone, and the museum opened in 1933. The exterior retains the classical form of the original, with colonnades, sculpted caryatids and a central dome. Inside, the museum is organized thematically as a hands-on science and technology museum rather than a conventional history museum. Exhibits include the captured German submarine U-505, the streamlined Pioneer Zephyr train, a simulated coal mine, aircraft and spacecraft, and long-running displays on human anatomy and transportation. The restoration of the building was a major civic project of the Depression era, and further renovations have updated the galleries while preserving the palace's grand central hall. Visitors interested in the building's history can focus on the architecture and the stories of the fair, while the exhibits give a broad introduction to science. Admission is charged, with extra fees for some special exhibitions, and prices and hours should be confirmed on msichicago.org. A full visit can take four hours or more, and families often spend most of a day. The museum sits within Jackson Park, near Wooded Island and the lagoons designed by Frederick Law Olmsted for the fair.