June 6, 2001 -- Soldier Field ... Perfuming the Pig

June 6, 2001 – “Soldier Field:  Perfuming the Pig,” is the headline atop a Chicago Tribune editorial that begins, “Now even the most self-interested backers of the plan to desecrate Soldier Field realize what a failure their design is.” [Chicago Tribune, June 6, 2001] After yet another model is unveiled for the renovation of the field, the Tribune expresses its dissatisfaction, “… critics of the design are correct:  This grotesquerie would overwhelm everything around it and ruin part of a fragile, supposedly protected lakefront.  By acknowledging flaws in the oafish design, Daley signals the obvious:  He holds the power to twist arms and protect the public’s interest.”  The editorial concludes, “Daley has clearly become aware of the problem.  He needs only the will to make this deal a winner.  His legacy is in nobody’s hands but his … this city only erects a football stadium every 80 or so years.  Having admitted the obvious, let’s do the job right.”

June 6, 1928 – President Edward J. Kelly of the South Park Board announces that a gift of $500,000 from the former vice-president of Sears, Roebuck and Co., Max Adler, will be used for construction of a planetarium on an island east of the Field Museum.  “In giving the planetarium to Chicago,” Adler says, “I have a three-fold conception:  Scientific, popular and philosophical.  One is to further the progress of science.  The second is to enable the people to observe the action of the heavenly bodies as heretofore only astronomers have been able to do.  The third is to emphasize that all mankind, rich and poor, powerful and weak, as well as all nations, here and abroad, constitute part of one universe, and that under the great celestial firmament there is no division or cleavage, but rather interdependence and unity.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, June 7, 1928]