Science and Industry Museum

About

Built for the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition as the 'Palace of Fine Arts,' this building concealed a brick substructure beneath its plaster facade, allowing it to survive long after the fair's other structures vanished. After a stint housing the Field Museum of Natural History, the building stood empty from 1920 until Julius Rosenwald, president of Sears, Roebuck and Company, poured over $5 million of his own fortune into founding a new museum there in 1926; it opened to the public in 1933 alongside the Century of Progress Exposition. Walking through the halls, visitors come face to face with the massive hull of the U-505, one of only six German submarines captured by the Allies during World War II. Elsewhere stands the Pioneer Zephyr, the first diesel-powered stainless-steel streamlined train; in another hall, a recreated deep-shaft coal mine built with genuine mining equipment; and, holding its place since 1949, Colleen Moore's intricately crafted miniature Fairy Castle.