Jane Ammeson
Times correspondent
When Rebecca Graff, a Ph.D. student at the University of Chicago in need of a dissertation, was told by a professor that the view before them, from the schoolâs Ida Noyes Hall, was âa hundred years ago the center of the world,â she saw more than the bucolic splendor of Jackson Park hugging the Lake Michigan shoreline.
Instead, her sights went to what lay beneath â evidence of the 1893 Worldâs Columbian Exposition, an unexcavated but huge part of Chicagoâs history. Held in celebration of the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus arrival in the New World, the exposition attracted 27 million people, who paid $21.5 million for admission in a six-month period.