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Anger brews at Barack Obama for destroying national landmark to build monument to self

November 13, 2025 | | Print Article

Anger is brewing over former President Barack Obama’s decision to build his presidential library in the heart of a historic Chicago park.

Costing $850 million, the Obama Presidential Center’s construction in Jackson Park began in 2021 and will conclude next spring.

The problem is that many locals do not care for the odd-looking building that is his library, invading their community.

“Obama, of all people, should not be building a palace for himself, a fortress in the middle of a public park,” famous Chicago-area architect Grahm Balkany, a left-winger, told the New York Post. “It’s just contrary to what I thought he believed in.”

“So many people in Chicago, unfortunately, didn’t want to speak truth to power — especially when that power was Obama,” he added.

Balkany wasn’t wrong. Obama is worshipped so much by the left that criticizing the former president in any way is unfathomable to them.

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That said, Balkany isn’t entirely alone in his public criticisms.

“I always see it as a cenotaph, a tombstone, a crusader fortress in brutalist style,” W.J.T. Mitchell, a University of Chicago art historian, told the Post, describing Obama’s stone library.

“It’s not a beautiful building. Its monumentality violates the spirit of the democratic urban park,” he added, referencing park-designer Fredrick Law Olmsted’s vision for the space.

“[Olmsted] was transforming park design from the English manor house [which] was always punctuated by the castle, or some magnificent building, to signify the feudal lord who owned that land,” he explained.

“[Olmsted believed] this is public land, this is owned by everybody. There should not be any great monuments or monumental buildings. It’s about the people. The most atrocious thing was when they started clear-cutting a thousand healthy, century-old trees. I was there to document it. It struck many people as an environmental disaster,” Mitchell added.

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Building the library also reportedly involved bulldozing a garden.

“The Center bulldozed Jackson Park’s Women’s Garden — a local favorite spot for picnics and cookouts — to create a staging area for earth movers,” according to the Post.

Ward Miller, a Chicago architect and executive director of the nonprofit Preservation Chicago, also complained about the center.

“This was an administration that many people in Chicago supported and thought was really revolutionary,” he told the Post. “And then to see that same administration take these 20 acres from the public was very disturbing.”

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“It seems in stark contrast to the pastoral and naturalistic landscape … The lack of windows and the materials and the shape, and most of all the height, have a startling impact,” he added.

The center has faced several lawsuits since it was announced, including one in 2018 by local park groups demanding that the parkland be kept under public ownership.

“We feel like if somebody doesn’t step up to protect parks and keep them open to the public, that the natural, easy road is that they will disappear over time,” plaintiff Van Bistrow told the New York Times.

What is definitely disappearing is affordable housing.

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According to Dixon Romeo, the executive director of Southside Together, the rent for homes adjacent to the center has spiked.

“Developers, he said, have been buying up buildings, forcing out low-income tenants, and creating new luxury developments capitalizing on the center’s (and the Obamas’) prestige,” the Times notes.

“How do we ensure that the city of Chicago does not let this be another case of something that was supposed to help black folks actually hurt them?” Romeo asked the paper.

Vivek Saxena
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