CHICAGO – A shiny new library, a towering museum and a civic center devoted to the nation's 44th president have been a decade in the making on Chicago's South Side.
Now, the
Obama Presidential Center is on the verge of
opening to the public on Juneteenth weekend.
The center sits on a 19.3-acre campus on Chicago's South Side, complete with a playground, sledding hill, Chicago Public Library branch and more. Standing eight stories tall in the park is the museum, a slightly different take on
historical presidential libraries. Instead of housing all of the records at a presidential library, the Obama Foundation had the presidential archives digitized and instead created a museum and community spaces.