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A Century of Progress
Burnham Park lakefront · Chicago, Illinois, United States · 1933-05-27

Chicago's second world's fair ran two seasons on made land along the lake, and paid for itself in the depths of the Depression.
The record
| Date | 1933-05-27 |
|---|---|
| Place | Burnham Park lakefront, Chicago, Illinois, United States |
| Coordinates | 41.85, -87.61 (city-level precision) |
| Scope | Local interest |
| Sources | Wikipedia |
| Added | 2026-08-14 · source: editors |
Coordinates are given at city level. A landmark-level coordinate points at the structure; a city-level one points at the settlement, not at a parcel.
Finding photographs
Every one of these is a search, not a guess: the event is documented, so the pictures exist somewhere. Start here.
- Wikimedia Commons — freely licensed images, with the licence stated on every file. This is the only source we republish from.
- The reference article — its own illustrations, and its citations to archives.
- Image search filtered to reusable licences — useful for tracing which institution holds a picture.
- National and municipal archives of United States, and the picture desks of newspapers published there at the time.
Check the licence before you reuse anything. A photograph being online, or being old, does not make it free; in most countries a 1960s press photograph is still in copyright.
Footage
Newsreel and archive film of events like this often survives. Search YouTube for this event If you find good footage, send us the link and we will attach it to this page.
Time layers at this place
One place, several moments in time. This location has 5 recorded time layers between 1924 and 2003 — slide through them:
- 1924 — Soldier Field
- 1933 — A Century of Progress this page
- 1933 — Century of Progress
- 1972 — 1972 Chicago commuter rail crash
- 2003 — 2003 E2 nightclub stampede
Seeded by the editors. This entry was compiled by us from public reference works and is labelled as such, not presented as a reader’s contribution. Sources are listed on the entry. If you know more, or we have it wrong, tell us — corrections are published.
You can add to this page
This entry is a skeleton on purpose. If you were there, if your family was, or if you simply know the place: photographs (yours or ones you have the right to share), comments and corrections to the record above, and observations — what the place was like before, after, what the books get wrong. Everything is read by a person before publication and credited the way you ask.
What readers have added
Nothing yet — this place is waiting for its first memory. The form below takes a date, a story, photographs and links.
Do you know something about Burnham Park lakefront, Chicago, Illinois?
Old photographs, what your family remembers being on the corner, a shop that is not on any map we have. Contributions are read by a person before anything is published, and we never publish the names of living people.
Nearby in United States
- 1972 Chicago commuter rail crash (1972)Navy Pier
- Century of Progress (1933)Navy Pier
- 2003 E2 nightclub stampede (2003)Magnificent Mile
- Soldier Field (1924)
- Grant Park, August 1968 (1968)Chicago, Illinois
- Quarantine Speech (1937)Navy Pier