During the most devastating financial crisis our country has ever faced — The Great Depression — Chicago held a huge, extravagant event. The Elmhurst History Museum captures that 1933-34 World’s Fair with its latest exhibit, World of Tomorrow: A Century of Progress, which opened Friday and runs through Jan. 4.

The Century of Progress Exposition on Chicago’s Northerly Island wasn’t planned just as an exhibition. It was also a rallying cry.

“They wanted to be able to instill hope. They wanted to give a little bit of happiness,” said Sara Cox, the museum’s curator of exhibits.

Still, that fair remains overshadowed by the World’s Columbian Exposition and its White City that Chicago had erected 40 years previously.

“A lot of people are familiar with the 1893 fair and the inventions that c

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