By Patrick F. Cannon

After many delays, the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago will open on June 19^th. The date was chosen because it coincides with “Juneteenth,” which commemorates the day in 1865 when slaves in Texas were informed of their freedom, the last to hear the news.

The center is in Chicago’s Jackson Park. This was a controversial choice, since parkland was considered sacrosanct by many Chicagoans, including me. The resulting lawsuits delayed the site acquisition, but the courts – dominated by Obama’s Democratic Party – decided it could use park land. The cost? $850 million, raised from donors and grants.

To be fair, the new center provides more than the usual presidential library and museum. It includes a  Chicago public library, community meeting facilities, extensive walks, and gardens and even an indoor regulation basketball court. Aside from the museum itself, access is free. But it isn’t a typical presidential library. Obama chose to send his papers to  the National Archives in Washington, where they will be available in digital form. The National Archives directly operates all the other presidential libraries, but not  this one.

I imagine attendance will be high, at least for the first year. The most popular (in 2024) was Ronald Reagan’s with 258,000 visitors. Next came John F. Kennedy with 147,000. The least visited, with 25,000 visitors, was, predictably, Herbert Hoover’s. Both the Nixon and Clinton libraries were among the lowest, with about 50,000 each. One wonders why. Anyway,  total attendance for all 13 was just over 1,000,000.

The design of the Obama center has received mixed reviews. As you can see, most structures are unobtrusive, with the exception of  the tower, which has received the most criticism.  It reminds me of those great stone monoliths one sees in Utah’s Monument Valley. This great rock is covered with Obama quotes, which many people have found difficult to read. But there it shall stand, occupying 20 acres of a park designed by  the great Frederick Law Olmstead; a park where I played and rambled as a child. Most memorably, it’s former football field was the location of my greatest athletic triumph – playing parish football for St. Phillip Neri, I once intercepted a pass and ran it back 80 yards for a touchdown!

I don’t mean to single former President Abama out. Frankly, I wish none of them existed. They are increasingly ego trips, efforts by the former presidents to write their history in the best possible light. Only the judgment of history should decide which presidents should be memorialized. That 1 million visits to all the existing museums pales in comparison to the 8 million who visit the Lincoln Memorial every year; or in another sphere, the 5.7 million who annually enter the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.  

In both cases, the occupants earned their way into our esteem. Can we say the same for all those presidents?

Copyright 2026, Patrick F. Cannon