The $850 million Barack Obama Presidential Center is being criticized by historians and environmentalists for its "brutalist" design and for destroying the landscape of the historic park where it was constructed, according to the New York Post.

The Post asked:

What kind of US president demolishes a cherished piece of American history in order to build a shrine to himself?

That’s what many Chicagoans are asking  — and they aren’t talking about President Trump’s East Wing demolition to make way for a White House ballroom.

Locals are still trying to make sense of the $850 million Obama Presidential Center, dubbed “The Obamalisk,” which broke ground in Chicago’s historic Jackson Park in 2021 and will be finished next Spring.

"Of all people"

Liberal Chicago architect Grahm Balkany said of the project, “Obama, of all people, should not be building a palace for himself, a fortress in the middle of a public park. It’s just contrary to what I thought he believed in."

University of Chicago art historian W.J.T. Mitchell also had a problem with the 240-foot boxy concrete building.  “I always see it as a cenotaph, a tombstone, a crusader fortress in brutalist style," he said.

“It’s not a beautiful building. Its monumentality violates the spirit of the democratic urban park" in which it sits, Mitchell added.

Environmentalists angry

That park was designed by visionary architect Fredrick Law Olmsted for the 1893 World's Fair and is protected land because of its historical value.

Despite its protected stauts, Obama was able to take 20 acres of it for the library, a decision city planners may now regret.

The builders reportedly cut down 1,000 century-old trees for the construction, which also had environmentalists up in arms.

"It's about the people"

“[Olmsted] was transforming park design from the English manor house [which] was always punctuated by the castle, or some magnificent building, to signify the feudal lord who owned that land,” Mitchell told The Post.

The architect believed, “this is public land, this is owned by everybody. There should not be any great monuments or monumental buildings. It’s about the people,” Mitchell continued.

“The most atrocious thing was when they started clearcutting a thousand, healthy, century-old trees. I was there to document it. It struck many people as an environmental disaster,” Mitchell added.

Mitchell admitted that it was hard for those in charge of allowing the building to stand up to Barack Obama, a two-time president who was almost universally revered by the liberal establishment.

“So many people in Chicago, unfortunately, didn’t want to speak truth to power — especially when that power was Obama," he said.

In the early stages of the project, Chicago had to outbid New York and Hawaii to get the project, and now it may wish it had lost.