Lee Bey: The Urban Observer

On three separate occasions, Chicago won the right to a world's fair. No other city in the world has been more fortunate. You know about the first two fairs--the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893 and A Century of Progress in 1933.

Chicago won a bid to host the third fair--Age of Discovery, slated for 1992. But in the political, social and civic tumult of 1980s Chicago, the city folded its cards on the venture and the fair never got further than renderings and excited talk. But here's what some of it might have looked like. The scene is a view looking from an expanded Northerly Island across a bridge onto the mainland.