Blair Kamin’s recent article (Tempo, June 4) on Chicago’s museum campus reminded me that people in authority so often have wasteful and unimportant goals.
I used to drive from the North Side to the South Side by way of Lake Shore Drive every day, and there was nothing wrong with the S curve and the Y-section to warrant the waste of millions of dollars to eliminate them. I suppose a broad footbridge could have been built to replace the tunnel from the museum to the aquarium, but that’s relatively inexpensive.
It is unfortunate that all the money wasted on road building could not have been given over to the Field Museum to restore it to what it was in the 1940s, one of the nation’s greatest treasures.
Now it is a mess, not 10 percent as good as it once was. We visited last Dec. 31 and were shocked at its ruin. There was a video going on the junk movie “Godzilla,” and there was a huge bandstand set up in the great hall for a New Year’s Eve party that had a loathsome appearance. It was the precursor of a drunken coatroom brawl just a few hours later (Main news, Jan. 3).
I fondly recalled the incredible Hall of Useful Plants that as a child I imagined would be there for all time, along with the Hall of Gems and Minerals. The pamphlets published by the museum staff were eagerly purchased and read.
It is truly heartbreaking.
