Chicago's Obama Presidential Center at 100 days: Thousands of visitors and new library cards

It's been 100 days since the Obama Presidential Center opened in Chicago to the public. So how has that gone?

The Obama Presidential Center formally opened to the public on Friday, June 19. Since then, the Obama Foundation says it's received more than 175,000 visitors to the ticketed events and ticketed museum, with visitors representing all 50 states and 39 countries.

See our interactive guide to the Obama Presidential Center

Almost 4,000 of those visitors have been active U.S. military, and more than 61,000 of them have been Illinois residents.

There have also been four known marriage proposals and three bald eagle sightings, the Obama Foundation said.

The foundation's stats show how the center is supporting the city as well. There have been 206,684 visits to the new Obama Presidential Center branch of the Chicago Public Library, and 3,382 new library accounts created at that branch. There have been over 6,300 weekly bus rides on the newly expanded #10 CTA bus route, and since the center opened there have been 1,715 one-way Divvy bike rides that started there and 1,662 one-way Divvy trips that ended there.

So far, 200,000 flowers have blossomed on the massive presidential center campus, and 429 lbs. of produce have been grown in the Eleanor Roosevelt Fruit garden this summer – including 131 lbs. of cucumbers.

The Obama Presidential Center and its facilities are open daily and free to the public with the exception of the museum, which requires a ticket. While tickets for the museum have been sold out with each new round of tickets released, more tickets for next year are expected to go on sale in the near future.