World's Columbian Exposition
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The World's Columbian Exposition, also known as the Chicago World's Fair, was a world's fair held in
Chicago Chicago is the List of municipalities in Illinois, most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388, as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the List of Unite ...
from May 5 to October 31, 1893, to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's arrival in the
New World The term "New World" is used to describe the majority of lands of Earth's Western Hemisphere, particularly the Americas, and sometimes Oceania."America." ''The Oxford Companion to the English Language'' (). McArthur, Tom, ed., 1992. New York: ...
in 1492. The centerpiece of the Fair, held in Jackson Park, was a large water pool representing the voyage that Columbus took to the New World. Chicago won the right to host the fair over several competing cities, including
New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...
, Washington, D.C., and St. Louis. The exposition was an influential social and cultural event and had a profound effect on American
architecture Architecture is the art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills associated with construction. It is both the process and the product of sketching, conceiving, planning, designing, and construction, constructi ...
, the arts, American industrial optimism, and Chicago's image. The layout of the Chicago Columbian Exposition was predominantly designed by John Wellborn Root, Daniel Burnham, Frederick Law Olmsted, and Charles B. Atwood. It was the prototype of what Burnham and his colleagues thought a city should be. It was designed to follow Beaux-Arts principles of design, namely
neoclassical architecture Neoclassical architecture, sometimes referred to as Classical Revival architecture, is an architectural style produced by the Neoclassicism, Neoclassical movement that began in the mid-18th century in Italy, France and Germany. It became one of t ...
principles based on symmetry, balance, and splendor. The color of the material generally used to cover the buildings' façades, white staff, gave the fairgrounds its nickname, the White City. Many prominent architects designed its 14 "great buildings". Artists and musicians were featured in exhibits and many also made depictions and works of art inspired by the exposition. The exposition covered , featuring nearly 200 new but temporary buildings of predominantly neoclassical architecture,
canal Canals or artificial waterways are waterways or engineered channels built for drainage management (e.g. flood control and irrigation) or for conveyancing water transport vehicles (e.g. water taxi). They carry free, calm surface ...
s and
lagoon A lagoon is a shallow body of water separated from a larger body of water by a narrow landform, such as reefs, barrier islands, barrier peninsulas, or isthmuses. Lagoons are commonly divided into ''coastal lagoons'' (or ''barrier lagoons'') an ...
s, and people and cultures from 46 countries. More than 27 million people attended the exposition during its six-month run. Its scale and grandeur far exceeded the other world's fairs, and it became a symbol of emerging American exceptionalism, much in the same way that the Great Exhibition became a symbol of the
Victorian era In the history of the United Kingdom and the British Empire, the Victorian era was the reign of Queen Victoria, from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. Slightly different definitions are sometimes used. The era followed the ...
United Kingdom. Dedication ceremonies for the fair were held on October 21, 1892, but the fairgrounds were not opened to the public until May 1, 1893. The fair continued until October 30, 1893. In addition to recognizing the 400th anniversary of the discovery of the New World, the fair served to show the world that Chicago had risen from the ashes of the Great Chicago Fire, which had destroyed much of the city in 1871. On October 9, 1893, the day designated as Chicago Day, the fair set a world record for outdoor event attendance, drawing 751,026 people. The debt for the fair was soon paid off with a check for $1.5 million (equivalent to $ in ). Chicago has commemorated the fair with one of the stars on its municipal flag.


History


Planning and organization

Many prominent civic, professional, and commercial leaders from around the United States helped finance, coordinate, and manage the Fair, including Chicago shoe company owner Charles H. Schwab, Chicago railroad and manufacturing magnate John Whitfield Bunn, and Connecticut banking, insurance, and iron products magnate Milo Barnum Richardson, among many others. The fair was planned in the early 1890s during the Gilded Age of rapid industrial growth, immigration, and class tension. World's fairs, such as London's 1851 Crystal Palace Exhibition, had been successful in Europe as a way to bring together societies fragmented along class lines. The first American attempt at a world's fair in Philadelphia in 1876 drew crowds, but was a financial failure. Nonetheless, ideas about distinguishing the 400th anniversary of Columbus' landing started in the late 1880s. Civic leaders in St. Louis, New York City, Washington DC, and Chicago expressed interest in hosting a fair to generate profits, boost real estate values, and promote their cities. Congress was called on to decide the location. New York financiers J. P. Morgan,
Cornelius Vanderbilt Cornelius Vanderbilt (May 27, 1794 – January 4, 1877), nicknamed "the Commodore", was an American business magnate who built his wealth in railroads and shipping. After working with his father's business, Vanderbilt worked his way into lead ...
, and William Waldorf Astor, among others, pledged $15 million to finance the fair if Congress awarded it to New York, while Chicagoans Charles T. Yerkes,
Marshall Field Marshall Field (August 18, 1834January 16, 1906) was an American entrepreneur and the founder of Marshall Field's, Marshall Field and Company, the Chicago-based department stores. His business was renowned for its then-exceptional level of qua ...
, Philip Armour, Gustavus Swift, and Cyrus McCormick, Jr., offered to finance a Chicago fair. What finally persuaded Congress was Chicago banker Lyman Gage, who raised several million additional dollars in a 24-hour period, over and above New York's final offer. Chicago representatives not only fought for the world's fair for monetary reasons, but also for reasons of practicality. In a Senate hearing held in January 1890, representative Thomas Barbour Bryan argued that the most important qualities for a world's fair were "abundant supplies of good air and pure water", "ample space, accommodations and transportation for all exhibits and visitors". He argued that New York had too many obstructions, and Chicago would be able to use large amounts of land around the city where there was "not a house to buy and not a rock to blast" and that it would be located so that "the artisan and the farmer and the shopkeeper and the man of humble means" would be able to easily access the fair. Bryan continued to say that the fair was of "vital interest" to the West, and that the West wanted the location to be Chicago. The city spokesmen would continue to stress the essentials of a successful exposition and that only Chicago was fit to fill these exposition requirements. The location of the fair was decided through several rounds of voting by the United States House of Representatives. The first ballot showed Chicago with a large lead over New York, St. Louis and Washington, D.C., but short of a majority. Chicago broke the 154-vote majority threshold on the eighth ballot, receiving 157 votes to New York's 107. The exposition corporation and national exposition commission settled on Jackson Park and an area around it as the fair site. Daniel H. Burnham was selected as director of works, and George R. Davis as director-general. Burnham emphasized architecture and sculpture as central to the fair and assembled the period's top talent to design the buildings and grounds including Frederick Law Olmsted for the grounds. The temporary buildings were designed in an ornate neoclassical style and painted white, resulting in the fair site being referred to as the "White City". The Exposition's offices set up shop in the upper floors of the Rand McNally Building on Adams Street, the world's first all-steel-framed skyscraper. Davis' team organized the exhibits with the help of G. Brown Goode of the Smithsonian. The Midway was inspired by the 1889 Paris Universal Exposition, which included ethnological "villages". Civil rights leaders protested the refusal to include an African American exhibit. Frederick Douglass, Ida B. Wells, Irvine Garland Penn, and Ferdinand Lee Barnet co-authored a pamphlet entitled "The Reason Why the Colored American is not in the World's Columbian Exposition – The Afro-American's Contribution to Columbian Literature" addressing the issue. Wells and Douglass argued, "when it is asked why we are excluded from the World's Columbian Exposition, the answer is Slavery." Ten thousand copies of the pamphlet were circulated in the White City from the Haitian Embassy (where Douglass had been selected as its national representative), and the activists received responses from the delegations of England, Germany, France, Russia, and India. The exhibition did include a limited number of exhibits put on by African Americans, including exhibits by the sculptor Edmonia Lewis, a painting exhibit by scientist George Washington Carver, and a statistical exhibit by Joan Imogen Howard. Black individuals were also featured in white exhibits, such as Nancy Green's portrayal of the character Aunt Jemima for the R. T. Davis Milling Company.


Operation

The fair opened in May and ran through October 30, 1893. Forty-six nations participated in the fair, which was the first world's fair to have national pavilions. They constructed exhibits and pavilions and named national "delegates"; for example, Haiti selected Frederick Douglass to be its delegate. The Exposition drew over 27 million visitors. The fair was originally meant to be closed on Sundays, but the Chicago Woman's Club petitioned that it stay open. The club felt that if the exposition was closed on Sunday, it would restrict those who could not take off work during the work-week from seeing it. The exposition was located in Jackson Park and on the Midway Plaisance on in the neighborhoods of South Shore, Jackson Park Highlands, Hyde Park, and Woodlawn. Charles H. Wacker was the director of the fair. The layout of the fairgrounds was created by Frederick Law Olmsted, and the Beaux-Arts architecture of the buildings was under the direction of Daniel Burnham, Director of Works for the fair. Renowned local architect Henry Ives Cobb designed several buildings for the exposition. The director of the American Academy in Rome, Francis Davis Millet, directed the painted mural decorations. Indeed, it was a coming-of-age for the arts and architecture of the " American Renaissance", and it showcased the burgeoning neoclassical and Beaux-Arts styles.


Assassination of mayor and end of fair

The fair ended with the city in shock, as popular mayor Carter Harrison III was assassinated by Patrick Eugene Prendergast two days before the fair's closing. Closing ceremonies were canceled in favor of a public memorial service. Jackson Park was returned to its status as a public park, in much better shape than its original swampy form. The lagoon was reshaped to give it a more natural appearance, except for the straight-line northern end where it still laps up against the steps on the south side of the Palace of Fine Arts/Museum of Science & Industry building. The Midway Plaisance, a park-like boulevard which extends west from Jackson Park, once formed the southern boundary of the
University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, or UChi) is a Private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Its main campus is in the Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, Chic ...
, which was being built as the fair was closing (the university has since developed south of the Midway). The university's football team, the Maroons, were the original " Monsters of the Midway." The exposition is mentioned in the university's alma mater: "The City White hath fled the earth, / But where the azure waters lie, / A nobler city hath its birth, / The City Gray that ne'er shall die."


Attractions

The World's Columbian Exposition was the first world's fair with an area for amusements that was strictly separated from the exhibition halls. This area, developed by a young music promoter, Sol Bloom, concentrated on Midway Plaisance and introduced the term "midway" to American English to describe the area of a carnival or fair where sideshows are located. It included carnival rides, among them the original Ferris Wheel, built by George Washington Gale Ferris Jr. This wheel was high and had 36 cars, each of which could accommodate 40 people. The importance of the Columbian Exposition is highlighted by the use of ' ("Chicago wheel") in many Latin American countries such as Costa Rica and Chile in reference to the Ferris wheel. One attendee, George C. Tilyou, later credited the sights he saw on the Chicago midway for inspiring him to create America's first major amusement park, Steeplechase Park in Coney Island, New York. The fair included life-size reproductions of Christopher Columbus' three ships, the '' Niña'' (real name ''Santa Clara''), the '' Pinta'', and the '' Santa María''. These were intended to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Columbus' discovery of the Americas. The ships were constructed in Spain and then sailed to America for the exposition. The celebration of Columbus was an intergovernmental project, coordinated by American special envoy William Eleroy Curtis, the Queen Regent of Spain, and Pope Leo XIII. The ships were a very popular exhibit.
Eadweard Muybridge Eadweard Muybridge ( ; 9 April 1830 – 8 May 1904, born Edward James Muggeridge) was an English photographer known for his pioneering work in photographic studies of motion, and early work in motion-picture Movie projector, projection. He ...
gave a series of lectures on the Science of Animal Locomotion in the Zoopraxographical Hall, built specially for that purpose on Midway Plaisance. He used his
zoopraxiscope The zoopraxiscope (initially named ''zoographiscope'' and ''zoogyroscope'') is an early device for displaying moving images and is considered an important predecessor of the movie projector. It was conceived by photographic pioneer Eadweard ...
to show his moving pictures to a paying public. The hall was the first commercial movie theater. The "Street in Cairo" included the popular dancer known as Little Egypt. She introduced America to the suggestive version of the belly dance known as the " hootchy-kootchy", to a tune said to have been improvised by Sol Bloom (and now more commonly associated with snake charmers) which he had composed when his dancers had no music to dance to. Bloom did not copyright the song, putting it immediately in the
public domain The public domain (PD) consists of all the creative work to which no Exclusive exclusive intellectual property rights apply. Those rights may have expired, been forfeited, expressly Waiver, waived, or may be inapplicable. Because no one holds ...
. Also included was the first moving walkway or travelator, which was designed by architect Joseph Lyman Silsbee. It had two different divisions: one where passengers were seated, and one where riders could stand or walk. It ran in a loop down the length of a lakefront pier to a casino. Although denied a spot at the fair, Buffalo Bill Cody decided to come to Chicago anyway, setting up his ''Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show'' just outside the edge of the exposition. Nearby, historian Frederick Jackson Turner gave academic lectures reflecting on the end of the frontier which Buffalo Bill represented. The electrotachyscope of Ottomar Anschütz was demonstrated, which used a Geissler tube to project the illusion of moving images. Louis Comfort Tiffany made his reputation with a stunning chapel designed and built for the Exposition. After the Exposition the Tiffany Chapel was sold several times, even going back to Tiffany's estate. It was eventually reconstructed and restored and in 1999 it was installed at the
Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art The Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art, a museum noted for its Art Nouveau collection, houses the most comprehensive collection of the works of Louis Comfort Tiffany found anywhere, a major collection of American art pottery, and fine ...
. Architect Kirtland Cutter's Idaho Building, a rustic log construction, was a popular favorite, visited by an estimated 18 million people. The building's design and interior furnishings were a major precursor of the Arts and Crafts movement. The event also held a notable "hoochie coochie" dance show which led to Bloom becoming one of the earliest people in U.S. history to make large sums of money off of shows which were reminiscent of stripteases.


Anthropology

There was an Anthropology Building at the World's Fair. Nearby, "The Cliff Dwellers" featured a rock and timber structure that was painted to recreate Battle Rock Mountain in Colorado, a stylized recreation of an American Indian cliff dwelling with pottery, weapons, and other relics on display.Joseph M. Di Cola & David Stone (2012
Chicago's 1893 World's Fair
, page 21
There was also an Eskimo display. There were also birch bark wigwams of the Penobscot tribe. Nearby was a working model Indian school, organized by the Office of Indian Affairs, that housed delegations of Native American students and their teachers from schools around the country for weeks at a time.


Rail

The '' John Bull'' locomotive was displayed. It was only 62 years old, having been built in 1831. It was the first locomotive acquisition by the
Smithsonian Institution The Smithsonian Institution ( ), or simply the Smithsonian, is a group of museums, Education center, education and Research institute, research centers, created by the Federal government of the United States, U.S. government "for the increase a ...
. The locomotive ran under its own power from
Washington, DC Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly known as Washington or D.C., is the capital city and Federal district of the United States, federal district of the United States. The city is on the Potomac River, across from ...
, to Chicago to participate, and returned to Washington under its own power again when the exposition closed. In 1981 it was the oldest surviving operable
steam locomotive A steam locomotive is a locomotive that provides the force to move itself and other vehicles by means of the expansion of steam. It is fuelled by burning combustible material (usually coal, Fuel oil, oil or, rarely, Wood fuel, wood) to heat ...
in the world when it ran under its own power again. A Baldwin 2-4-2 locomotive was showcased at the exposition, and subsequently the type was known as the ''Columbia''. An original
frog A frog is any member of a diverse and largely semiaquatic group of short-bodied, tailless amphibian vertebrates composing the order (biology), order Anura (coming from the Ancient Greek , literally 'without tail'). Frog species with rough ski ...
switch and portion of the superstructure of the famous 1826 Granite Railway in Massachusetts could be viewed. This was the first commercial railroad in the United States to evolve into a common carrier without an intervening closure. The railway brought granite stones from a rock quarry in Quincy, Massachusetts, so that the Bunker Hill Monument could be erected in Boston. The frog switch is now on public view in East Milton Square, Massachusetts, on the original right-of-way of the Granite Railway. Transportation by rail was the major mode of transportation. A 26-track train station was built at the southwest corner of the fair. While trains from around the country would unload there, there was a local train to shuttle tourists from the Chicago Grand Central Station to the fair. The newly built Chicago and South Side Rapid Transit Railroad also served passengers from Congress Terminal to the fairgrounds at Jackson Park. The line exists today as part of the CTA Green Line.


Country and state exhibition buildings

Forty-six countries had pavilions at the exposition.
Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and the archipelago of Svalbard also form part of the Kingdom of ...
participated by sending the ''
Viking Vikings were seafaring people originally from Scandinavia (present-day Denmark, Norway, and Sweden), who from the late 8th to the late 11th centuries raided, pirated, traded, and settled throughout parts of Europe.Roesdahl, pp. 9� ...
'', a replica of the Gokstad ship. It was built in Norway and sailed across the
Atlantic Ocean The Atlantic Ocean is the second largest of the world's five borders of the oceans, oceanic divisions, with an area of about . It covers approximately 17% of Earth#Surface, Earth's surface and about 24% of its water surface area. During the ...
by 12 men, led by Captain Magnus Andersen. In 1919, this ship was moved to Lincoln Park. It was relocated in 1996 to Good Templar Park in Geneva, Illinois, where it awaits renovation. Thirty-four U.S. states also had their own pavilions. The work of noted feminist author Kate McPhelim Cleary was featured during the opening of the Nebraska Day ceremonies at the fair, which included a reading of her poem "Nebraska". Among the state buildings present at the fair were California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, and Texas; each was meant to be architecturally representative of the corresponding states. Four United States territories also had pavilions located in one building:
Arizona Arizona is a U.S. state, state in the Southwestern United States, Southwestern region of the United States, sharing the Four Corners region of the western United States with Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah. It also borders Nevada to the nort ...
,
New Mexico New Mexico is a state in the Southwestern United States, Southwestern region of the United States. It is one of the Mountain States of the southern Rocky Mountains, sharing the Four Corners region with Utah, Colorado, and Arizona. It also ...
,
Oklahoma Oklahoma ( ; Choctaw language, Choctaw: , ) is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. It borders Texas to the south and west, Kansas to the north, Missouri to the northea ...
, and
Utah Utah is a landlocked state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It is one of the Four Corners states, sharing a border with Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico. It also borders Wyoming to the northea ...
. Visitors to the Louisiana Pavilion were each given a seedling of a cypress tree. This resulted in the spread of cypress trees to areas where they were not native. Cypress trees from those seedlings can be found in many areas of West Virginia, where they flourish in the climate. The ''Illinois'' was a detailed, full-scale mockup of an ''Indiana''-class battleship, constructed as a naval exhibit.


Guns and artillery

The German firm Krupp had a pavilion of artillery, which apparently had cost one million dollars to stage, including a coastal gun of 42 cm in bore (16.54 inches) and a length of 33 calibres (45.93 feet, 14 meters). A breech-loaded gun, it weighed 120.46 long tons (122.4 metric tons). According to the company's marketing: "It carried a charge projectile weighing from 2,200 to 2,500 pounds which, when driven by 900 pounds of brown powder, was claimed to be able to penetrate at 2,200 yards a wrought-iron plate three feet thick if placed at right angles." Nicknamed "The Thunderer", the gun had an advertised range of 15 miles. On this occasion John Schofield declared Krupps' guns "the greatest peacemakers in the world". This gun was later seen as a precursor of the company's World War I Dicke Berta howitzers.


Religions

The 1893 Parliament of the World's Religions, which ran from September 11 to September 27, marked the first formal gathering of representatives of Eastern and Western spiritual traditions from around the world. According to
Eric J. Sharpe Eric John Sharpe (19 September 1933 – 19 October 2000) was the founding Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Sydney, Australia. He was a major scholar in the Phenomenology (philosophy), phenomenology of religion, the history of m ...
, Tomoko Masuzawa, and others, the event was considered radical at the time, since it allowed non-Christian faiths to speak on their own behalf. For example, it is recognized as the first public mention of the
Baháʼí Faith The Baháʼí Faith is a religion founded in the 19th century that teaches the Baháʼí Faith and the unity of religion, essential worth of all religions and Baháʼí Faith and the unity of humanity, the unity of all people. Established by ...
in North America; it was not taken seriously by European scholars until the 1960s.


Moving walkway

Along the banks of the lake, patrons on the way to the casino were taken on a moving walkway designed by architect Joseph Lyman Silsbee, the first of its kind open to the public, called ''The Great Wharf, Moving Sidewalk'', it allowed people to walk along or ride in seats.


Horticulture

Horticultural exhibits at the Horticultural Hall included cacti and
orchid Orchids are plants that belong to the family Orchidaceae (), a diverse and widespread group of flowering plants with blooms that are often colourful and fragrant. Orchids are cosmopolitan plants that are found in almost every habitat on Eart ...
s as well as other plants in a greenhouse.


Architecture


White City

Most of the buildings of the fair were designed in the
neoclassical architecture Neoclassical architecture, sometimes referred to as Classical Revival architecture, is an architectural style produced by the Neoclassicism, Neoclassical movement that began in the mid-18th century in Italy, France and Germany. It became one of t ...
style. The area at the Court of Honor was known as The White City. Façades were made not of stone, but of a mixture of plaster, cement, and jute fiber called staff, which was painted white, giving the buildings their "gleam". Architecture critics derided the structures as "decorated sheds." The buildings were clad in white
stucco Stucco or render is a construction material made of aggregates, a binder, and water. Stucco is applied wet and hardens to a very dense solid. It is used as a decorative coating for walls and ceilings, exterior walls, and as a sculptural and ...
, which, in comparison to the tenements of Chicago, seemed illuminated. It was also called the White City because of the extensive use of street lights, which made the boulevards and buildings usable at night. In 1892, working under extremely tight deadlines to complete construction, director of works Daniel Burnham appointed Francis Davis Millet to replace the fair's official director of color-design, William Pretyman. Pretyman had resigned following a dispute with Burnham. After experimenting, Millet settled on a mix of oil and white lead whitewash that could be applied using compressed air spray painting to the buildings, taking considerably less time than traditional brush painting. Joseph Binks, maintenance supervisor at Chicago's Marshall Field's Wholesale Store, who had been using this method to apply whitewash to the subbasement walls of the store, got the job to paint the Exposition buildings. Claims this was the first use of spray painting may be apocryphal since journals from that time note this form of painting had already been in use in the railroad industry from the early 1880s. Many of the buildings included sculptural details and, to meet the Exposition's opening deadline, chief architect Burnham sought the help of Chicago Art Institute instructor Lorado Taft to help complete them. Taft's efforts included employing a group of talented women sculptors from the Institute known as "the White Rabbits" to finish some of the buildings, getting their name from Burnham's comment "Hire anyone, even white rabbits if they'll do the work." The words "Thine alabaster cities gleam" from the song " America the Beautiful" were inspired by the White City.


Role in the City Beautiful movement

The White City is largely credited for ushering in the City Beautiful movement and planting the seeds of modern city planning. The highly integrated design of the landscapes, promenades, and structures provided a vision of what is possible when planners, landscape architects, and architects work together on a comprehensive design scheme. The White City inspired cities to focus on the beautification of the components of the city in which municipal government had control; streets, municipal art, public buildings, and public spaces. The designs of the City Beautiful Movement (closely tied with the municipal art movement) are identifiable by their classical architecture, plan symmetry, picturesque views, and axial plans, as well as their magnificent scale. Where the municipal art movement focused on beautifying one feature in a city, the City Beautiful movement began to make improvements on the scale of the district. The White City of the World's Columbian Exposition inspired the Merchants Club of Chicago to commission Daniel Burnham to create the Plan of Chicago in 1909.


Great buildings

There were fourteen main "great buildings" centered around a giant reflective pool called the Grand Basin. Buildings included: * The Administration Building, designed by Richard Morris Hunt * The Agricultural Building, designed by Charles McKim of McKim, Mead & White * The Manufactures and Liberal Arts Building, designed by George B. Post. If this building were standing today, it would rank third in volume (8,500,000m3) and eighth in footprint (130,000 m2) on
list of largest buildings Buildings around the world listed by usable space (volume), footprint (area), and floor space (area) comprise single structures that are suitable for continuous human occupancy. There are, however, some Nonbuilding structure#Exceptions, exception ...
. It exhibited works related to literature, science, art and music. * The Mines and Mining Building, designed by Solon Spencer Beman * The Electricity Building, designed by Henry Van Brunt and Frank Maynard Howe * The Machinery Hall, designed by Robert Swain Peabody of Peabody and Stearns * The Woman's Building, designed by Sophia Hayden * The Transportation Building, designed by Adler & Sullivan * The Fisheries Building designed by Henry Ives Cobb * Forestry Building designed by Charles B. Atwood * Horticultural Building designed by Jenney and Mundie * Anthropology Building designed by Charles B. Atwood


Transportation Building

Louis Sullivan's polychrome proto-Modern Transportation Building was an outstanding exception to the prevailing style, as he tried to develop an organic American form. Years later, in 1922, he wrote that the classical style of the White City had set back modern American architecture by forty years. As detailed in Erik Larson's popular history '' The Devil in the White City'', extraordinary effort was required to accomplish the exposition, and much of it was unfinished on opening day. The famous Ferris Wheel, which proved to be a major attendance draw and helped save the fair from bankruptcy, was not finished until June, because of waffling by the board of directors the previous year on whether to build it. Frequent debates and disagreements among the developers of the fair added many delays. The spurning of Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show proved a serious financial mistake. Buffalo Bill set up his highly popular show next door to the fair and brought in a great deal of revenue that he did not have to share with the developers. Nonetheless, construction and operation of the fair proved to be a windfall for Chicago workers during the serious economic recession that was sweeping the country.


Surviving structures

File:1893 Nina Pinta Santa Maria replicas.jpg, alt=Nina, Pinta, Santa Maria replicas., '' Pinta'', '' Santa María'', and '' Niña'' replicas from Spain. File:Viking, replica of the Gokstad Viking ship, at the Chicago World Fair 1893.jpg, alt=Viking, replica of the Gokstad Viking ship., ''
Viking Vikings were seafaring people originally from Scandinavia (present-day Denmark, Norway, and Sweden), who from the late 8th to the late 11th centuries raided, pirated, traded, and settled throughout parts of Europe.Roesdahl, pp. 9� ...
'', a replica of the Gokstad ship. File:Chicago expo White City fire.jpg, alt=White City fire, After the fair, the White City on fire.
Almost all of the fair's structures were designed to be temporary; of the more than 200 buildings erected for the fair, the only two which still stand in place are the Palace of Fine Arts and the World's Congress Auxiliary Building. From the time the fair closed until 1920, the Palace of Fine Arts housed the Field Columbian Museum (now the Field Museum of Natural History, since relocated); in 1933 (having been completely rebuilt in permanent materials), the Palace building re-opened as the Museum of Science and Industry. The second building, the World's Congress Building, was one of the few buildings not built in Jackson Park, instead it was built downtown in Grant Park. The cost of construction of the World's Congress Building was shared with the
Art Institute of Chicago The Art Institute of Chicago, founded in 1879, is one of the oldest and largest art museums in the United States. The museum is based in the Art Institute of Chicago Building in Chicago's Grant Park (Chicago), Grant Park. Its collection, stewa ...
, which, as planned, moved into the building (the museum's current home) after the close of the fair. The three other significant buildings that survived the fair represented Norway, the Netherlands, and the State of Maine. The
Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and the archipelago of Svalbard also form part of the Kingdom of ...
Building was a recreation of a traditional wooden stave church. After the Fair it was relocated to Lake Geneva, and in 1935 was moved to a museum called Little Norway in Blue Mounds, Wisconsin. In 2015 it was dismantled and shipped back to Norway, where it was restored and reassembled. The second is the Maine State Building, designed by Charles Sumner Frost, which was purchased by the Ricker family of Poland Spring, Maine. They moved the building to their resort to serve as a library and art gallery. The Poland Spring Preservation Society now owns the building, which was listed on the
National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government's official United States National Register of Historic Places listings, list of sites, buildings, structures, Hist ...
in 1974. The third is The Dutch House, which was moved to
Brookline, Massachusetts Brookline () is an affluent town in Norfolk County, Massachusetts, United States, and part of the Greater Boston, Boston metropolitan area. An exclave of Norfolk County, Brookline borders six of Boston's neighborhoods: Brighton, Boston, Brighton ...
. The 1893 Viking ship that was sailed to the Exposition from Norway by Captain Magnus Andersen is located in Geneva, Illinois. The ship is open to visitors on scheduled days April through October. The main altar at St. John Cantius in Chicago, as well as its matching two side altars, are reputed to be from the Columbian Exposition. Since many of the other buildings at the fair were intended to be temporary, they were removed after the fair. The White City so impressed visitors (at least before air pollution began to darken the façades) that plans were considered to refinish the exteriors in marble or some other material. These plans were abandoned in July 1894, when much of the fair grounds was destroyed in a fire.


Gallery

File:Chi-fair-13-20080924.jpg, The Administration Building and Grand Court during the October 9, 1893, commemoration of the 22nd anniversary of the Chicago Fire. File:Chicago expo Manufactures bldg.jpg, The Manufactures and Liberal Arts Building, seen from the southwest. File:Chicago expo Horticultural bldg.jpg, Horticultural Building, with Illinois Building in the background. File:Chicago expo Machinery Hall.jpg, A view toward the Peristyle from Machinery Hall. File:Chicago expo Midway Plaisance.jpg, Midway Plaisance File:The World's Columbian exposition, Chicago, 1893 (1893) (14593740420).jpg, Frederick MacMonnies' Columbian Fountain. File:columex.jpg, "Canal of Venice" during Chicago World's Fair 1893 File:Die Gartenlaube (1893) b 417.jpg, President Cleveland opens the World's Fair, as depicted by Rudolf Cronau in 1893


Later criticisms

Frank Lloyd Wright later wrote that "By this overwhelming rise of grandomania I was confirmed in my fear that a native architecture would be set back at least fifty years." According to
University of Notre Dame The University of Notre Dame du Lac (known simply as Notre Dame; ; ND) is a Private university, private Catholic research university in Notre Dame, Indiana, United States. Founded in 1842 by members of the Congregation of Holy Cross, a Cathol ...
history professor Gail Bederman, the event symbolized a male-dominated and Eurocentrist society. In her 1995 text ''Manliness and Civilization'', she writes, "The White City, with its vision of future perfection and of the advanced racial power of manly commerce and technology, constructed civilization as an ideal of white male power." According to Bederman, people of color were barred entirely from participating in the organization of the White City and were instead given access only to the Midway exhibit, "which specialized in spectacles of barbarous races – 'authentic' villages of Samoans, Egyptians, Dahomans, Turks, and other exotic peoples, populated by actual imported 'natives.'" Two small exhibits were included in the White City's "Woman's Building" which addressed women of color. One, entitled "Afro-American" was installed in a distant corner of the building. The other, called "Woman's Work in Savagery," included baskets, weavings, and African, Polynesian, and Native American arts. Though they were produced by living women of color, the materials were represented as relics from the distant past, embodying "the work of white women's own distant evolutionary foremothers."


Visitors

Helen Keller, along with her mentor Anne Sullivan and Dr. Alexander Graham Bell, visited the fair in summer 1893. Keller described the fair in her autobiography '' The Story of My Life''. Early in July, a Wellesley College English teacher named Katharine Lee Bates visited the fair. The White City later inspired the reference to "alabaster cities" in her poem and lyrics " America the Beautiful". The exposition was extensively reported by Chicago publisher William D. Boyce's reporters and artists. There is a very detailed and vivid description of all facets of this fair by the Persian traveler Mirza Mohammad Ali Mo'in ol-Saltaneh written in Persian. He departed from
Persia Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) and also known as Persia, is a country in West Asia. It borders Iraq to the west, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Armenia to the northwest, the Caspian Sea to the north, Turkmenistan to the nort ...
on April 20, 1892, especially for the purpose of visiting the World's Columbian Exposition. Pierre de Coubertin visited the fair with his friends Paul Bourget and Samuel Jean de Pozzi. He devotes the first chapter of his book ''Souvenirs d'Amérique et de Grèce'' (1897) to the visit. Swami Vivekananda visited the fair to attend the Parliament of the World's Religions and delivered his famous speech ''Sisters and Brothers of America!''. Kubota Beisen was an official delegate of Japan. As an artist, he sketched hundreds of scenes, some of which were later used to make woodblock print books about the Exhibition. Serial killer H. H. Holmes attended the fair with two of his eventual victims, Annie and Minnie Williams.
Bulgaria Bulgaria, officially the Republic of Bulgaria, is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the eastern portion of the Balkans directly south of the Danube river and west of the Black Sea. Bulgaria is bordered by Greece and Turkey t ...
n writer Aleko Konstantinov visited the fair and wrote his
nonfiction Non-fiction (or nonfiction) is any document or media content that attempts, in good faith, to convey information only about the real world, rather than being grounded in imagination. Non-fiction typically aims to present topics objectively ...
book '' To Chicago and Back''.


Souvenirs

Examples of exposition souvenirs can be found in various American museum collections. One example, copyrighted in 1892 by John W. Green, is a folding
hand fan A handheld fan, or simply hand fan, is a broad, flat surface that is waved back and forth to create an airflow. Generally, purpose-made handheld fans are folding fans, which are shaped like a Circular sector, sector of a circle and made of a thi ...
with detailed illustrations of landscapes and architecture. Charles W Goldsmith produced a set of ten postcard designs, each in full colour, showing the buildings constructed for the exhibition. Columbian Exposition coins were also minted for the event.


Electricity

The effort to power the Fair with electricity, which became a demonstration piece for Westinghouse Electric and the
alternating current Alternating current (AC) is an electric current that periodically reverses direction and changes its magnitude continuously with time, in contrast to direct current (DC), which flows only in one direction. Alternating current is the form in w ...
system they had been developing for many years, took place at the end of what has been called the War of the currents between DC and AC. Westinghouse initially did not put in a bid to power the Fair but agreed to be the contractor for a local Chicago company that put in a low bid of US$510,000 to supply an alternating current-based system.Richard Moran (2007) ''Executioner's Current: Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse, and the Invention of the Electric Chair'', Knopf Doubleday, p. 97 Edison General Electric, which at the time was merging with the Thomson-Houston Electric Company to form
General Electric General Electric Company (GE) was an American Multinational corporation, multinational Conglomerate (company), conglomerate founded in 1892, incorporated in the New York (state), state of New York and headquartered in Boston. Over the year ...
, put in a US$1.72 million bid to power the Fair and its planned 93,000 incandescent lamps with
direct current Direct current (DC) is one-directional electric current, flow of electric charge. An electrochemical cell is a prime example of DC power. Direct current may flow through a conductor (material), conductor such as a wire, but can also flow throug ...
. After the Fair committee went over both proposals, Edison General Electric re-bid their costs at $554,000 but Westinghouse underbid them by 70 cents per lamp to get the contract.Quentin R. Skrabec, ''George Westinghouse: Gentle Genius'', pp. 135–137 Westinghouse could not use the Edison incandescent lamp since the patent belonged to General Electric and they had successfully sued to stop use of all patent infringing designs. Since Edison specified a sealed globe of glass in his design Westinghouse found a way to sidestep the Edison patent by quickly developing a lamp with a ground-glass stopper in one end, based on a Sawyer-Man "stopper" lamp patent they already had. The lamps worked well but were short-lived, requiring a small army of workmen to constantly replace them. Westinghouse Electric had severely underbid the contract and struggled to supply all the equipment specified, including twelve 1,000-horsepower single-phase AC generators and all the lighting and other equipment required. They also had to fend off a last-minute lawsuit by General Electric claiming the Westinghouse Sawyer-Man-based stopper lamp infringed on the Edison incandescent lamp patent. The International Exposition was held in an Electricity Building which was devoted to electrical exhibits. A statue of
Benjamin Franklin Benjamin Franklin (April 17, 1790) was an American polymath: a writer, scientist, inventor, statesman, diplomat, printer, publisher and Political philosophy, political philosopher.#britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Wood, 2021 Among the m ...
was displayed at the entrance. The exposition featured interior and exterior light and displays as well as displays of
Thomas Edison Thomas Alva Edison (February11, 1847October18, 1931) was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices in fields such as electric power generation, mass communication, sound recording, and motion pictures. These inventions, ...
's kinetoscope, search lights, a seismograph, electric incubators for chicken eggs, and
Morse code Morse code is a telecommunications method which Character encoding, encodes Written language, text characters as standardized sequences of two different signal durations, called ''dots'' and ''dashes'', or ''dits'' and ''dahs''. Morse code i ...
telegraph Telegraphy is the long-distance transmission of messages where the sender uses symbolic codes, known to the recipient, rather than a physical exchange of an object bearing the message. Thus flag semaphore is a method of telegraphy, whereas ...
. All the exhibits were from commercial enterprises. Participants included General Electric, Brush, Western Electric, and Westinghouse. The Westinghouse Company displayed several polyphase systems. The exhibits included a switchboard, polyphase generators, step-up transformers, transmission line, step-down transformers, commercial size induction motors and synchronous motors, and rotary direct current converters (including an operational railway motor). The working scaled system allowed the public a view of a system of polyphase power which could be transmitted over long distances, and be utilized, including the supply of direct current. Meters and other auxiliary devices were also present. Part of the space occupied by the Westinghouse Company was devoted to demonstrations of electrical devices developed by
Nikola Tesla Nikola Tesla (;"Tesla"
. ''Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary''.
; 10 July 1856 – 7 ...
including induction motors and the generators used to power the system. The rotating magnetic field that drove these motors was explained through a series of demonstrations including an '' Egg of Columbus'' that used the two-phase coil in the induction motors to spin a copper egg making it stand on end. Tesla himself showed up for a week in August to attend the International Electrical Congress, being held at the fair's Agriculture Hall, and put on a series of demonstrations of his wireless lighting system in a specially set up darkened room at the Westinghouse exhibit. These included demonstrations he had previously performed throughout America and Europe including using a nearby coil to light a wireless
gas-discharge lamp Gas-discharge lamps are a family of artificial light sources that generate light by sending an electric discharge through an ionization, ionized gas, a plasma (physics), plasma. Typically, such lamps use a noble gas (argon, neon, krypton, and x ...
held in his hand. Also at the Fair, the Chicago Athletic Association Football team played one of the first night football games against West Point (the earliest being on September 28, 1892, between Mansfield State Normal and Wyoming Seminary). Chicago won the game, 14–0. The game lasted only 40 minutes, compared to the normal 90 minutes.


Music


Musicians

* John Philip Sousa′s Band played for the Exposition dedication celebration in Chicago, 10 October through 21 October 1892. * Joseph Douglass, classical violinist, who achieved wide recognition after his performance there and became the first African-American violinist to conduct a transcontinental tour and the first to tour as a concert violinist. * Sissieretta Jones, a soprano known as "the Black Patti" and an already-famous opera singer. * A paper on African-American spirituals and shouts by Abigail Christensen was read to attendees. There were many other black artists at the fair, ranging from minstrel and early ragtime groups to more formal classical ensembles to street buskers. * Scott Joplin, pianist, from Texarkana, Texas; became widely known for his piano playing at the fair.


Other music and musicians

* The first
Indonesian music Indonesia is a country with many different Ethnic groups in Indonesia, tribes and ethnic groups, and its music is also very diverse, coming in hundreds of different forms and styles. Every region has its own culture and art, and as a result tr ...
performance in the United States was at the exposition. The
gamelan Gamelan (; ; , ; ) is the traditional musical ensemble, ensemble music of the Javanese people, Javanese, Sundanese people, Sundanese, and Balinese people, Balinese peoples of Indonesia, made up predominantly of percussion instrument, per ...
instruments used in the performance were later placed in the Field Museum of Natural History. * A group of
hula Hula () is a Hawaiian dance form expressing chant (''oli'') or song (Mele (Hawaiian language), ''mele''). It was developed in the Hawaiian Islands by the Native Hawaiians who settled there. The hula dramatizes or portrays the words of the oli ...
dancers led to increased awareness of Hawaiian music among Americans throughout the country. * Stoughton Musical Society, the oldest choral society in the United States, presented the first concerts of early American music at the exposition. * The first eisteddfod (a Welsh choral competition with a history spanning many centuries) held outside Wales was held in Chicago at the exposition. * A 250-voice Mormon Tabernacle Choir competed in the Eisteddfod, taking the second place prize of $1,000. This was the first appearance of the choir outside the Utah Territory. * On August 12, 1893, Antonín Dvořák conducted a gala "Bohemian Day" concert at the exposition, besieged by visitors including the conductor of the Chicago Symphony, who arranged for performance of Dvořák's '' American'' string quartet, just completed in Spillville, Iowa, during a Dvořák family vacation in a Czech-speaking community there. * American composer Amy Beach (1867–1944) was commissioned by the Board of Lady Managers of the fair to compose a choral work (Festival Jubilate, op. 17) for the opening of the Woman's Building. * Sousa's Band played concerts in the south bandstand on the Great Plaza, 25 May to 28 June 1893. * The University of Illinois Military Band conducted by student leaders Charles Elder and Richard Sharpe played concerts twice daily in the Illinois Building 9 June to 24 June 1893. Soloists were William Sandford, euphonium; Charles Elder, clarinet; William Steele, cornet. The band members slept on cots on the top floor of the building. * On June 8, 1893, The Exposition Orchestra, an expanded version of the Chicago Symphony conducted by guest conductor Vojtěch I. Hlaváč, played the American premiere of
Modest Mussorgsky Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky (; ; ; – ) was a Russian composer, one of the group known as "The Five (composers), The Five." He was an innovator of Music of Russia, Russian music in the Romantic music, Romantic period and strove to achieve a ...
's '' A Night on Bald Mountain'' as part of a concert of Russian folk music. * A pipe organ containing over 3,900 pipes, one of the largest in the world at the time, was built by the Farrand & Votey Organ Company to the specifications of Chicago organist Clarence Eddy. It was one of the first great organs to rely on electrical connections from its keys to its pipes. * Musicologist Anna Morsch and composer Charlotte Sporleder presented a program of German music. * Composer and pianist Anita Socola Specht won the title "best amateur pianist in the United States," although some of the judges told her, "You are not an amateur, you are an artist!"


Art


American artists exhibiting


Painters

* Adam Emory Albright * Henry Alexander * Maitland Armstrong * William Jacob Baer * William Bliss Baker * Cecilia Beaux * James Carroll Beckwith * Enella Benedict * Frank Weston Benson * Daniel Folger Bigelow * Ralph Albert Blakelock * Edwin Howland Blashfield * Mary Cassatt * Sarah Paxton Ball Dodson * Thomas Eakins * Charles Morgan McIlhenney * Gari Melchers * Anna Lea Merritt * John Harrison Mills * Robert Crannell Minor * Louis Moeller * Harry Humphrey Moore * Edward Moran * John Singer Sargent


Sculptors

* Sarah Fisher Ames, sculptor * John J. Boyle sculptor * Cyrus Edwin Dallin, sculptor – '' Signal of Peace'' * Charles Grafly – ''Bust of Daedalus'' * Mary Lawrence, sculptor *
Edward Kemeys Edward Kemeys (January 31, 1843 – May 11, 1907) was an American sculptor and considered America's first animalier. He is best known for his sculptures of animals, particularly the Lions (Kemeys), two bronze lions that mark the entrance to the ...
* Theo Alice Ruggles Kitson (as Theo Alice Ruggles) * Aloys Loeher * Carol Brooks MacNeil (as Caroline Brooks) * Helen Farnsworth Mears * Samuel Murray – ''Bust of Walt Whitman'' * William Rudolf O'Donovan – ''Bust of Thomas Eakins'' * Bessie Potter * Peter Moran * George D. Peterson * Preston Powers * Katherine Prescott * A. Phimister Proctor * John Rogers * Carl Rohl-SmithCarr, Carolyn Kinder, et al., ''Revisiting the White City: American Art at the 1893 World's Fair'', National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C. 1993 * Lorado Taft * Douglas Tilden * Luella Varney


Japanese art

Japan's artistic contribution was mainly in
porcelain Porcelain (), also called china, is a ceramic material made by heating Industrial mineral, raw materials, generally including kaolinite, in a kiln to temperatures between . The greater strength and translucence of porcelain, relative to oth ...
,
cloisonné Cloisonné () is an ancient technology, ancient technique for decorating metalwork objects with colored material held in place or separated by metal strips or wire, normally of gold. In recent centuries, vitreous enamel has been used, but inla ...
enamel, metalwork and embroidery. While 55 paintings and 24 sculptures came from Japan, 271 of the 290 exhibits in the Palace of Fine Arts were Japanese. Artists represented included Miyagawa Kozan, Yabu Meizan, Namikawa Sōsuke, and Suzuki Chokichi.


Women artists exhibiting

The women artists at the Woman's Building included Anna Lownes, Viennese painter Rosa Schweninger, and many others. American composer Amy Cheney Beach was commissioned by the Board of Lady Managers of the fair to compose a choral work (Festival Jubilate, op. 17) for the opening of the Woman's Building. The Mrs Potts sad-iron system was on display. Ami Mali Hicks' stencil design was selected to adorn the
frieze In classical architecture, the frieze is the wide central section of an entablature and may be plain in the Ionic order, Ionic or Corinthian order, Corinthian orders, or decorated with bas-reliefs. Patera (architecture), Paterae are also ...
in the assembly room of the Women's Building. Musicologist Anna Morsch and composer Charlotte Sporleder presented a program of German music. The Woman's Building included a Woman's Building Library Exhibit, which had 7,000 books – all by women. The Woman's Building Library was meant to show the cumulative contribution of the world's women to literature.


"Greatest Refrigerator on Earth" fire tragedy

A large Romanesque structure called "Greatest Refrigerator on Earth" stored thousands of pounds of the Exposition's food and held an ice-skating rink for patrons. The large structure demonstrated artificial freezing, a recent development, and was planned by architect Franklin P. Burnham. The structure's floor space was 130 by 255 feet and its height reached almost 200 feet. On the evening of July 10, 1893, the "Greatest Refrigerator on Earth" caught fire. Two firemen entered, one sliding down a rope and another on a line of hose, and both were trapped in the burning refrigerator. A total of fifteen people died, twelve firefighters and three civilians, in front of a crowd of more than a thousand fairgoers. The only artifact that survived the fire was a twelve-foot copper statue of Christopher Columbus, which was kept as a monument to the men who lost their lives and is kept by the fire museum of Chicago.


Notable firsts


Concepts

* Frederick Jackson Turner lectured on his Frontier thesis. * The Pledge of Allegiance was first performed at the exposition by a mass of school children lined up in military fashion. * Contribution to Chicago's nickname, the " Windy City". Some argue that Charles Anderson Dana of the '' New York Sun'' coined the term related to the hype of the city's promoters. Other evidence, however, suggests the term was used as early as 1881 in relation to either Chicago's "windbag" politicians or to its weather.


Commemorations

*
United States Mint The United States Mint is a bureau of the United States Department of the Treasury, Department of the Treasury responsible for producing coinage for the United States to conduct its trade and commerce, as well as controlling the movement of bull ...
offered its first commemorative coins: the Columbian Exposition quarter dollar and Columbian Exposition half dollar * The
United States Post Office Department The United States Post Office Department (USPOD; also known as the Post Office or U.S. Mail) was the predecessor of the United States Postal Service, established in 1792. From 1872 to 1971, it was officially in the form of a Cabinet of the Un ...
produced its first picture postcards and Columbian Issue commemorative stamps.


Edibles and potables

* Cream of Wheat * The brownie was invented by Bertha Palmer for the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition. * Milton Hershey bought a European exhibitor's chocolate manufacturing equipment and added chocolate products to his caramel manufacturing business. * Juicy Fruit gum * Quaker Oats * Shredded Wheat * Pabst Blue Ribbon * Peanut butter * Aunt Jemima pancake mix was widely popularized by spokesperson Nancy Green's pancake cooking and story telling performances. * Cracker Jack's new recipe was introduced at the Exposition * The patented steam-powered popcorn cart was introduced by Cretors * Vienna Sausage started selling its frankfurters and sausages near one of the entrances to the Midway Plaisance, just outside the Old Vienna Village. The company later became known as Vienna Beef, famously recognized as "Chicago's Hot Dog".


Inventions and manufacturing advances

* A device that made plates for printing books in
Braille Braille ( , ) is a Tactile alphabet, tactile writing system used by blindness, blind or visually impaired people. It can be read either on embossed paper or by using refreshable braille displays that connect to computers and smartphone device ...
, unveiled by Frank Haven Hall, who met Helen Keller and her teacher Anne Sullivan at the exhibit. * Moving walkway, or travelator * The third rail giving electric power to elevated trains led directly to its first continuing US use.''The Chicago "L"'' by Greg Borzo * The "clasp locker", a clumsy slide fastener and forerunner to the
zipper A zipper (N. America), zip, zip fastener (UK), formerly known as a clasp locker, is a commonly used device for binding together two edges of textile, fabric or other flexible material. Used in clothing (e.g. jackets and jeans), luggage and oth ...
was demonstrated by Whitcomb L. Judson * Elongated coins (the squashed penny) * Ferris Wheel * First fully electrical kitchen including an automatic dishwasher * Phosphorescent lamps (a precursor to fluorescent lamps) * John T. Shayne & Company, the local Chicago furrier helped America gain respect on the world stage of manufacturing * Clark cell as a standard for measuring
volt The volt (symbol: V) is the unit of electric potential, Voltage#Galvani potential vs. electrochemical potential, electric potential difference (voltage), and electromotive force in the International System of Units, International System of Uni ...
age * A first prototype of a pressurized aerosol spray, by Francis Davis Millet. * The first practical electric automobile, invented by William Morrison.


Organizations

* Congress of Mathematicians, precursor to
International Congress of Mathematicians The International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) is the largest conference for the topic of mathematics. It meets once every four years, hosted by the International Mathematical Union (IMU). The Fields Medals, the IMU Abacus Medal (known before ...
* Interfaith dialogue (the Parliament of the World's Religions) ** First recorded public mention of the
Baháʼí Faith The Baháʼí Faith is a religion founded in the 19th century that teaches the Baháʼí Faith and the unity of religion, essential worth of all religions and Baháʼí Faith and the unity of humanity, the unity of all people. Established by ...
in North America


Performances

* The poet and humorist Benjamin Franklin King, Jr. first performed at the exposition. * Bodybuilder Eugen Sandow demonstrated feats of strength, promoted by Florenz Ziegfeld. * Magician Harry Houdini and his brother Theodore performed their magic act at the Midway.


Later years

The exposition was one influence leading to the rise of the City Beautiful movement. Results included grand buildings and fountains built around Olmstedian parks, shallow pools of water on axis to central buildings, larger park systems, broad boulevards and parkways and, after the start of the 20th century, zoning laws and planned suburbs. Examples of the City Beautiful movement's works include the City of Chicago, the
Columbia University Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Churc ...
campus, and the
National Mall The National Mall is a Landscape architecture, landscaped park near the Downtown, Washington, D.C., downtown area of Washington, D.C., the capital city of the United States. It contains and borders a number of museums of the Smithsonian Institu ...
in Washington, D.C. After the fair closed, J.C. Rogers, a banker from Wamego, Kansas, purchased several pieces of art that had hung in the rotunda of the U.S. Government Building. He also purchased architectural elements, artifacts and buildings from the fair. He shipped his purchases to Wamego. Many of the items, including the artwork, were used to decorate his theater, now known as the Columbian Theatre. Memorabilia such as books, tokens, published photographs, and well-printed admission tickets saved by guests are popular among collectors. The
George Washington University The George Washington University (GW or GWU) is a Private university, private University charter#Federal, federally-chartered research university in Washington, D.C., United States. Originally named Columbian College, it was chartered in 1821 by ...
maintains a small collection of exposition tickets for viewing and research purposes. The collection is currently cared for by GWU's Special Collections Research Center, located in the Estelle and Melvin Gelman Library.Guide to the World's Columbian Exposition Ticket Collection, 1893
, Special Collections Research Center, Estelle and Melvin Gelman Library, The George Washington University
When the exposition ended the Ferris Wheel was moved to Chicago's north side, next to an exclusive neighborhood. An unsuccessful Circuit Court action was filed against the owners of the wheel to have it moved. The wheel stayed there until it was moved to St. Louis for the 1904 World's Fair. The Columbian Exposition has celebrated many anniversaries since the fair in 1893. The Chicago Historical Society held an exhibition to commemorate the fair. The Grand Illusions exhibition was centered around the idea that the Columbian Exposition was made up of a series of illusions. The commemorative exhibition contained partial reconstructions, a video detailing the fair, and a catalogue similar to the one sold at the World's Fair of 1893.Harris, N. (1993). Grand Illusions Chicago' World's Fair of 1893. Chicago: Chicago Historical Society.


Academic views

Henry Adams wrote in his 1907 ''Education'': "The Exposition denied philosophy ... nce Noah’s Ark, no such Babel of loose and ill-jointed, such vague and ill-defined and unrelated thoughts and half-thoughts and experimental out-cries... had ruffled the surface of the Lakes." Trouillot, Michel-Rolph. ''Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History''. E-book, Boston: Beacon Press, 2015, https://hdl.handle.net/2027/heb04595.0001.001. Michel-Rolph Trouillot wrote that the academic aspect of the event was not very important, even though the Harvard Peabody Museum, the
Smithsonian Institution The Smithsonian Institution ( ), or simply the Smithsonian, is a group of museums, Education center, education and Research institute, research centers, created by the Federal government of the United States, U.S. government "for the increase a ...
, and Franz Boas made contributions.


In popular culture

* The Exposition is portrayed in the 2017 historical film, '' The Current War,'' concerning the competition between George Westinghouse and
Thomas Edison Thomas Alva Edison (February11, 1847October18, 1931) was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices in fields such as electric power generation, mass communication, sound recording, and motion pictures. These inventions, ...
to establish the dominant form of electricity in the United States. * '' 1893: A World's Fair Mystery'', an interactive fiction by Peter Nepstad that recreates the Exposition in detail. * '' Against the Day'', a fictional novel that takes place during the Exposition during the first act. * '' The Devil in the White City'', a non-fiction book intertwining the true tales of the architect behind the Exposition and serial killer H. H. Holmes. * ''Timebound'', a time travel novel by Rysa Walker, culminates at the Exposition. * '' Expo: Magic of the White City'', a 2005 documentary film about the Exposition by Mark Bussler. * The Exposition served as the setting for ''Against Odds,'' a novel by Emma Murdock Van Deventer. * '' Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth'', a graphic novel set in part at the Exposition * '' Wonder of the Worlds'', an adventure novel where Nikola Tesla, Mark Twain, and Houdini pursue Martian agents who have stolen a powerful crystal from Tesla at the Exposition. * '' The Will of an Eccentric'', an adventure novel by
Jules Verne Jules Gabriel Verne (;''Longman Pronunciation Dictionary''. ; 8 February 1828 – 24 March 1905) was a French novelist, poet and playwright. His collaboration with the publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel led to the creation of the ''Voyages extraor ...
. The Exposition is evoked with admiration in the early chapters. * The Exposition appears in the season 1 episode "The World's Columbian Exposition" of the NBC series '' Timeless''. * The Exposition is referenced in
Sufjan Stevens Sufjan Stevens ( ; born July 1, 1975) is an American singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist. He has released ten solo studio albums and multiple collaborative albums with other artists. Stevens has received Grammy and Academy Award nomina ...
's song in his album ''
Illinois Illinois ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern United States. It borders on Lake Michigan to its northeast, the Mississippi River to its west, and the Wabash River, Wabash and Ohio River, Ohio rivers to its ...
'', "Come On! Feel The Illinoise!", which consists of two parts. Part 1 is titled, "World's Columbian Exposition". * The Exposition plays a role in the historical novel, ''Owen Glen'', by Ben Ames Williams. * Mystery Train Island, a video game level on Poptropica released in 2011, is based on and is partially set at the Exposition, referred to as the 1893 Chicago World's Fair in the game. * '' BioShock Infinite'', a 2013 video game. The floating city-state of Columbia was created at the Exposition and toured across the world to promote American exceptionalism. * The exposition is a key setting of the novel '' The City Beautiful'' by Aden Polydoros. * The exposition appears in the travel book by Aleko Konstantinov, '' To Chicago and Back''. * The young adult novel ''Fair Weather'' by Illinois native author Richard Peck takes thirteen-year-old Rosie Beckett and her family from their downstate family farm to the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago. * '' The Dark Pictures Anthology: The Devil in Me'', a 2022 video game which was inspired by H. H. Holmes murder castle. * The Exposition appears in " 1893", the third episode of the second season of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) television series ''
Loki Loki is a Æsir, god in Norse mythology. He is the son of Fárbauti (a jötunn) and Laufey (mythology), Laufey (a goddess), and the brother of Helblindi and Býleistr. Loki is married to the goddess Sigyn and they have two sons, Narfi (son of Lo ...
'' (2023). In the episode,
Loki Loki is a Æsir, god in Norse mythology. He is the son of Fárbauti (a jötunn) and Laufey (mythology), Laufey (a goddess), and the brother of Helblindi and Býleistr. Loki is married to the goddess Sigyn and they have two sons, Narfi (son of Lo ...
and Mobius M. Mobius attend the Exposition in search of Ravonna Renslayer and Miss Minutes, and encounter Victor Timely, a variant of
Kang the Conqueror Kang the Conqueror (Nathaniel Richards) is a supervillain appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. Created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, the character first appeared in '' Fantastic Four'' #19 (October 1963) as Rama-Tut, an ...
, whose help they need to save the multiverse. * The Exposition also appears in the post-credits scene of the MCU film '' Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania'' (2023), which uses footage from ''Loki'' despite being released before it.


See also

* '' Signal of Peace'' * '' Kwanusila'' * List of world expositions * List of world's fairs * Benjamin W. Kilburn, stereoscopic view concession * H. H. Holmes, serial killer associated with the 1893 World's Fair * St. John Cantius Church (Chicago), whose main altar, as well as its matching two side altars, reputedly originate from the 1893 Columbian Exposition * Spectacle Reef Light * World's Largest Stove * World's Largest Cedar Bucket * Fairy lamp, candle sets popularized at Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee were used to illuminate an island at the Expo * St. Louis Autumnal Festival Association


Notes


References

* The project documenting The World's Columbian Exposition of 1893 �
Website main page
* * * * * Neuberger, Mary. 2006. "To Chicago and Back: Alecko Konstantinov, Rose Oil, and the Smell of Modernity" in ''Slavic Review'', Fall 2006. * Larson, Erik. The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America. New York: Vintage Books a Division of Random House, Inc., 2003.

* Redman, Samuel J. ''Bone Rooms: From Scientific Racism to Human Prehistory in Museums''. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 2016.
Placko, Dane. “Chilling Tour inside Serial Killer H. H. Holmes’ ‘Murder Castle’”. My Fox Chicago. Apr. 28, 2014. Oct 2, 2014.

French, Leanne; Grimm, Laura; Pak, Eudie. “H. H. Holmes Biography”
Biography. 2014. October 1, 2014. * French, Leanne; Grimm, Laura; Pak, Eudie. H. H. Holmes – The World Fair. Television clip. Biography. 2014. A&E Television Networks, LLC, 2014. Video from biography.com. * French, Leanne; Grimm, Laura; Pak, Eudie. H. H. Holmes – Chicago Expansion. Television clip. Biography. 2014. A&E Television Networks, LLC, 2014. Video from biography.com. * French, Leanne; Grimm, Laura; Pak, Eudie. H. H. Holmes – Finding the Victims. Television Clip. Biography. 2014. A&E Television Networks, LLC, 2014. Video from biography.com. * French, Leanne; Grimm, Laura; Pak, Eudie. H. H. Holmes – Full Biography. Television clip. Biography. 2014. A&E Television Networks, LLC, 2014. Video from biography.com.


Further reading

* Appelbaum, Stanley (1980). ''The Chicago World's Fair of 1893.'' New York: Dover Publications, Inc. * Arnold, C.D. ''Portfolio of Views: The World's Columbian Exposition''. National Chemigraph Company, Chicago & St. Louis, 1893. * Bancroft, Hubert Howe. ''The Book of the Fair: An Historical and Descriptive Presentation of the World's Science, Art and Industry, As Viewed through the Columbian Exposition at Chicago in 1893''. New York: Bounty, 1894. * Barrett, John Patrick,
Electricity at the Columbian Exposition
'. R.R. Donnelley, 1894. * * Bertuca, David, ed. ''World's Columbian Exposition: A Centennial Bibliographic Guide''. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996. * Buel, James William. ''The Magic City.'' New York: Arno Press, 1974. * Burg, David F. ''Chicago's White City of 1893.'' Lexington: The
University Press of Kentucky The University Press of Kentucky (UPK) is the scholarly publisher for the Commonwealth of Kentucky, and was organized in 1969 as successor to the University of Kentucky Press. The university had sponsored scholarly publication since 1943. In 194 ...
, 1976. * Corn, Wanda M. ''Women Building History: Public Art at the 1893 Columbian Exposition.'' Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011. * Dybwad, G. L., and Joy V. Bliss, ''Annotated Bibliography: World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago 1893''. Book Stops Here, 1992. * Eagle, Mary Kavanaugh Oldham, d. 1903, ed
''The Congress of Women: Held in the Woman's Building, World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago, U. S. A., 1893, With Portraits, Biographies and Addresses''
Chicago: Monarch Book Company, 1894. * Elliott, Maud Howe, 1854–1948, ed

Chicago and New York: Rand, McNally and Co., 1894. * Gonzalez, Robert Alexander
Designing Pan-America: U.S. Architectural Visions for the Western Hemisphere
'. Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, 2011. *Green, Christopher T
"A Stage Set for Assimilation: The Model Indian School at the World’s Columbian Exposition"
''Winterthur Portfolio''. Vol. 51, No. 2/3 (Summer/Autumn 2017). *
Glimpses of the World's Fair: A Selection of Gems of the White City Seen Through A Camera
', Laird & Lee Publishers, Chicago: 1893, accessed February 13, 2009. *
International Congress of Mathematicians The International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) is the largest conference for the topic of mathematics. It meets once every four years, hosted by the International Mathematical Union (IMU). The Fields Medals, the IMU Abacus Medal (known before ...

Mathematical papers read at the International Mathematical Congress
: held in connection with the World's Columbian exposition, Chicago, 1893 (1st : 1893 : Chicago). * Jaegerová, Anna.
Ideals of Authenticity: Euro-American Sculptural Representations of Native Americans at the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893
'. Diploma thesis. July 8, 2021. Masaryk University, Faculty of Arts. * Larson, Erik. '' Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America.'' New York: Crown, 2003. . * Ormos, István: ''Cairo in Chicago : Cairo street at the world's Columbian exposition of 1893'', Le Caire : Institut Francais d'Archéologie Orientale (IFAO), 2021; * ''Photographs of the World's Fair: an elaborate collection of photographs of the buildings, grounds and exhibits of the World's Columbian Exposition with a special description of The Famous Midway Plaisance''. Chicago: Werner, 1894. * Peck, Richard, ''Fair Weather'', an adventure novel about a 13-year-old being away from home for the first time and visiting the fair. * Reed, Christopher Robert. ''"All the World Is Here!" The Black Presence at White City''. Bloomington:
Indiana University Press Indiana University Press, also known as IU Press, is an academic publisher founded in 1950 at Indiana University that specializes in the humanities and social sciences. Its headquarters are located in Bloomington, Indiana. IU Press publishes ...
, 2000. * Rydell, Robert, and Carolyn Kinder Carr, eds. ''Revisiting the White City: American Art at the 1893 World's Fair''. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1993. * Silkenat, David. "Workers in the White City: Working Class Culture at the World's Columbian Exposition," Illinois State Historical Journal 2011 (104): 266-300. * Wells, Ida B.
''The Reason Why the Colored American Is Not in the World's Columbian Exposition: The Afro-American's Contribution to Columbian Literature.''
Originally published 1893. Reprint ed., edited by Robert W. Rydell. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1999. * World's Columbian Exposition (1893 : Chicago, Ill.). Board of Lady Managers

by World's Columbian Exposition (1893 : Chicago). Board of Lady Managers; edited by Edith E. Clarke. Chicago: n. pub., ca. 1894. A bibliography. * Yandell, Enid

by Enid Yandell, Jean Loughborough and Laura Hayes. Chicago: Bright, Leonard and Co., 1892. Biographical account of women at the fair.


External links


Expo 1893 Chicago
at Bureau International des Expositions
The 1893 World's Fair in Chicago
(worldsfairchicago1893.com). A standalone website that covers all aspects of the Exposition
Chicago 1893
is a media project about the Exposition which includes a book, film, and augmented reality






The Story of the Columbian Expo Battleship ''Illinois Bell''President Benjamin Harrison: Celebrating the 400th Anniversary of the Discovery of America
Shapell Manuscript Foundation


Robert N. Dennis Collection of Stereoscopic Views: Exhibitions 1893
Search results, at New York Public Library Digital Collections

Overview of an archival collection on the World's Columbian Exposition.
Columbian Theatre
History and information about artwork from the U.S. Government Building.

* ttp://www.ust.ucla.edu/ustweb/Projects/columbian_expo.htm Video simulations from the 1893 Columbian Exposition from UCLA's Urban Simulation Team
1893 Columbian Exposition Concerts


* ttp://www.gtj.org.uk/small/item/GTJ31358/ International Eisteddfod chair, Chicago, 1893
Photographs of the Exposition from the
Hagley Digital Archives
Map of Chicago Columbian Exposition from the American Geographical Society Library

Interactive Map of the Chicago Columbian Exposition, created in the Harvard Worldmap Platform

President Harrison: Worlds Columbian Exposition
Shapell Manuscript Foundation
Guide to the World's Columbian Exposition Ticket Collection, 1893, Special Collections Research Center, Estelle and Melvin Gelman Library, The George Washington University

Guide to World's Columbian Exposition resources
a
Field Museum Library

Guide to the World's Columbian Exposition Records 1891–1930
at th
University of Chicago Special Collections Research Center
{{Authority control World's fairs in Chicago Architecture in Chicago 1890s architecture in the United States 1893 in the United States South Side, Chicago Mesoamerican art exhibitions Pre-Columbian art exhibitions Beaux-Arts architecture in Illinois Festivals established in 1893 1890s in Chicago 1893 in Illinois