Century of Progress - Legacy

Legacy

Much of the fair site is now home to Northerly Island park (since the closing of Meigs Field) and McCormick Place. A column from the ruins of a Roman temple in Ostia given to Chicago by the Italian government to honor General Italo Balbo's 1933 trans-Atlantic flight still stands near Soldier Field. The city added a red star to its flag in 1933 to commemorate the Century of Progress Exposition (it was the fourth of the four stars currently on the flag). In conjunction with the fair, Chicago's Italian-American community raised funds and donated the statue of the Genoese navigator and explorer, Christopher Columbus (Grant Park). It was placed at the south end of Grant Park, near the site of the fair, and is located east of S. Columbus Drive and north of E. Roosevelt Road.

The Polish Museum of America possesses the painting of "Pulaski at Savannah" by Stanisław Kaczor-Batowski, which was exhibited at the Century of Progress fair and where it won first place. After the close of the fair, the painting went on display at The Art Institute of Chicago where it was unveiled by Eleanor Roosevelt on July 10, 1934. The painting was on display at the Art Institute until its purchase by the Polish Women's Alliance on the museum's behalf.

The U.S. Post Office Department issued a special fifty-cent Air Mail postage stamp, (C-18) to commemorate the visit of the German airship depicting the Federal Building in Chicago, the Graf Zeppelin in flight, and its home hangar in Friedrichshafen, Germany. This stamp is informally known as the Baby Zep to distinguish it from the much more valuable 1930 Zeppelin issues (C13–15). Separate from this issue, for the Fair the Post Office also printed 1 and 3 cent commemorative postage stamps, showing respectively Fort Dearborn and the modernistic Federal Building. These were also printed in separate souvenir sheets as imperforated blocks of 25 (catalog listings 728–31). In 1935 the sheets were reprinted (Scott 766-67).