The World's Columbian Exposition, running from May 1 to October 30, 1893, was organized to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus' landfall in North America. Held in Chicago a mere 22 years after the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, this World's Fair was nicknamed the White City due to the gleaming white facades of the temporary structures created for the fair. Architects and landscape designers involved in the design of the fair included John Wellborn Root, Daniel Burnham, and Frederick Law Olmsted.

Thomas D. Galloway (1939-2007), founding chair of the graduate program in urban planning in the University of Kansas School of Architecture and Urban Planning, taught at the University of Kansas from 1971 to 1980. After leaving the University of Kansas, he held a faculty position at the University of Rhode Island before becoming dean and professor in the College of Design at Iowa State University. He served as dean of the College of Architecture at the Georgia Institute of Technology from 1992 until 2007.

Galloway was known for establishing relationships with the Ecole Nationale Supérieur d'Architecture de Paris LaVillette in France and the Shenyang Technological University in China. He chaired a team that reviewed a new College of Engineering and Design at the University of Abu Dhabi and served as an urban planning consultant to the Sheik of the United Arab Emirates.

Academic and professional honors received during his career included being listed among the "30 Leaders who Bridge Practice and Education" in America's Best Architecture and Design Schools, published in the 2005 edition of Design Intelligence, and named a Lexus Leader of the Arts by Public Broadcasting Atlanta.

Galloway's collection includes publicity information, maps, books, catalogs and display lists, and photographic brochures from several World's Fairs, with a particular emphasis on the 1893 Chicago World's Fair. The influence on architecture and urban planning of the White City, the nickname for the fair's buildings, lay behind his lifelong interest in the fair. The first book in his collection was a gift from his wife in the year he graduated from the University of Washington.