Days before Christmas, construction workers at the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago began the installation of the concrete lettering that will make up the 2015 speech “You Are America” that will wrap the top south and west corners of the 225-foot-tall, granite museum on the city’s South Side campus.
The speech—given on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama—honors the 50th anniversary of the Selma to Montgomery marches. Designed by Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects, the building’s words are cast into custom panels with each letter standing five feet tall, according to a press release from the Center.
The words are an invitation to harness the energy of the surrounding community, elevate the voices of ordinary people, and ensure that the story of the Center is one in which South Side residents and visitors alike can se…
