MIDWEST: 4 Sites
What:
Stagg Field
 Where:
Chicago, IL
Why:
Stagg field is the football and athletic facility of the University of Chicago. In a
converted squash court beneath the stands, Enrico Fermi in 1939 achieved the first
sustained nuclear reaction. It’s a long way from here to Hiroshima, Chernobyl, and
40,000 armed atomic weapons. The physical process that leads directly to our deadly
condition started on this spot.
Surprise:
The site is as much as unmarked, and very difficult to find.
Internet site:
http://www.anl.gov/OPA/frontiers96/probo.html
What:
Geographic Center of the Contiguous 48 States
Where:
Lebanon, KS
Why:
We are most definitely in Kansas, Dorothy. Heartland, indeed, not for some sentimental,
patriotic reason, but for the purely geographic sense of continental bedrock spreading out
away from you equidistant in every direction for thousands of miles.
Surprise:
None. You were expecting surprises in Lebanon, Kansas?
Internet site:
http://www.ohwy.com/KS/l/lebanon.htm
What:
The best small-scale collection of 20th century architecture in the world.
Where:
Columbus Ind
Why:
Pride of place, otherwise known as boosterism, is a characteristic of small towns and
cities everywhere in the world. From spinach festivals to boasts about the world’s
biggest ball of twine, municipalities seek some way to put themselves on the tourist map.
For decades Columbus has been
encouraging local builders and developers to pay a little (or a lot) extra and hire
world-famous architects to do their projects. So successful has the idea been (the streets
of Columbus now sport buildings by the like of Birkets, Saarinen, Pei, Pelli, Skidmore
Owens and Merrill, Gwathmey, Caudill Rowlett and Scott) that architects vie to build here.
Surprise:
Taste tells. Though by so many very talented hands, the structures work quietly and subtly
together to produce a unique kind of easy beauty which comes only from a lot of talent
paying excruciating attention to detail.
Internet site:
http://columbus.in.us/index.asp
What:
Kent State University
Where:
Kent OH
Why:
May 4, 1970. On that date National Guardsmen shot and killed four students in a large
crowd protesting the Viet Nam war. If any single event finally and absolutely swung
America away from its tragic immersion in Southeast Asia it was this.
Surprise:
Eight years later, George Segal was commissioned to do the commemorative sculpture for the
site. The university declined to accept his work, In Memory of May 4, 1970, Kent State:
Abraham and Isaac, requesting instead a piece that would show a nude young woman
placing a flower in the barrel of a soldier’s rifle, to be call "Make Love, Not
War." Segal in turn declined to do that job, and his sculpture was acquired by
Princeton (see that entry in the "East" section).
Internet site:
http://www.library.kent.edu/exhibits/4may95/exhibit/memorials/segal.html
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