Some twenty acres of Jackson Park have been confiscated to build the Obama Presidential Center

Imagine if Columbia University's bid had proposed confiscating 20 acres of New York City's Central Park. It would have been called absurd (and more). But in Chicago, it was called the winning bid. For while the competing universities all touted their connection to the Obamas, Chicago offered a very special connection indeed. There, the backing of mayor Rahm Emanuel (Obama's former chief-of-staff) would ensure that the Chicago Park District, Plan Commission, City Council, and, ultimately, the State Legislature would all "get on board"

To guide them in Chicago, Williams and Tsien have Olmsted's prolific writings about public landscapes and his ideas about Jackson Park in particular, where he worked for decades. And yet their centrepiece for the OPC is a 235-foot-tall (72-metre) tower that would dominate the park, a design intervention completely antithetical to Olmsted's intent. We know that because Olmsted said so.

The tower would be a design intervention completely antithetical to Olmsted's intent

Following the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Jackson Park and a series of fires in 1894 that left the site a charred ruin, Olmsted came back with a plan to heal the park. In a letter to South Park Board president Joseph Donnersberger, he wrote that the Museum of Science and Industry – a holdover from the Exposition – was to be the only "dominating object of interest" in the park, and that "all other buildings and structures" were to "be auxiliary to and subordinate to the scenery of the park".

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