April 29, 2009

I’m obviously not the only person who was taken with the Columbian Exposition as “few events of the late nineteenth century captured the popular imagination as did the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893.”  Visitors often described their experiences in the “White City as something unreal.” (1) There is no doubt that the activities of the fair from planning to opening and through the close of the fair changed American culture forever.  “The extraordinary responsiveness of visitors, both informed critics and lay public, to the wonders of the White City is highly revealing of American values, anticipations, and aspirations.” (2) The Fair was a merging of industrial achievements with fine art, low and high culture, urban America with the rural frontier. 

From the selection of Chicago as the host city, the Columbian Exposition illustrated the blend between homegrown and imported culture.  “The city may have been only the nation’s second largest, but in important respects it represented the quintessential American city of its time.  Some, including Chicagoans, deplored its rawness, its crudities, its lack of an older, established society; others translated these apparent defects into virtues and praised the city for is preoccupation with success, its dynamic vitality, its openness to change.” (3) While the Exposition boosted national pride, it did even more to boost Chicago’s image to the rank of cosmopolitan city.   “Chicago had been certain that it was the most American city in the land and that it was destined to be the nation’s greatest commercial and industrial center.  It was sensitive, however, to the charge that it could never be truly great, anymore than a nation or a civilization could be, until it also developed as a center of arts and letters and acquired the refinements of a cultured society and a broader civic spirit.” (4) By all accounts, the Columbian Exposition elevated the international profile of Chicago, softened its image as a purely industrial center and secured itself a place in the world of art and culture.

When Jackson Park was chosen as the site for the Exposition, the architects and planners worried whether they could ever tame the land into any semblance of order.  “Land in the Jackson Park area appreciated as much as 1,000 percent in the year following the announcement of the fair’s site.  Some of the land that lay partially submerged underwater, and was previous valued at six hundred dollars an acre, now fetched fifteen thousand dollars.” (5)

Perhaps the greatest change the Fair provided was in the way architecture and urban planning were seen.  “It primed the whole of America – not just a few rich architectural patrons – to think of cities in a way they never had before.”  When the architects chose the neo-classical design style for the buildings in the Court of Honor, the decision was seen as a poor choice, a step back in architectural evolution.  “To argue, as some have, that the revival represented the triumph of a foreign culture over an indigenous one is to border on provincialism, if not chauvinism.  Like it or not, the United States has always owed much of its cultural heritage to Western traditions, including classicism and neoclassicism, that stemmed from Europe.” (6)

Many of the architects responsible for the Court of Honor buildings, specifically Daniel Burnham, would move on to the redesign of the broader city of Chicago.  The White City’s influence on Burnham’s plan for Chicago had more to do with unifying American cities than imposing European ideas upon them.  “Architectural unity and magnitude that is in scale, together with unified landscape design, would have enhanced the habitableness of American cities, made them more beautiful, more usable, more congenial, more refined, more coherent, by improving their physical aspect, their physiognomies, and thus transforming them into environments that augmented, rather than fragmented, the quality of life.” (7)

The Exposition was a truly democratizing event, allowing everyone who could afford the price of admission the opportunity to have similar experiences.  Many have criticized Fair organizers for including the Midway Plaisance as a lowbrow diversion and a blight on the overall majesty of the fair.  “The main purpose of the Midway, after all, was not to separate the classes and their supposedly, conflicting tastes but to keep the exposition afloat financially.” (8) The Midway has been a part of every state fair and carnival but none to this day can rival the Exposition’s.  However, most visitors saw the exhibits and displaces on the Midway as mere curiosities.  “This is not in any way to depreciate the Midway.  The Ferris Wheel alone was remarkable, as actual and symbolic innovation – as a machine revolutionizing the world of amusement.  As an arterial link between the exposition and south Chicago’s Washington Park, the Midway was a suitably appealing site of international pleasures and cosmopolitanism.” (9)

Though industry, technology and culture were on wide display throughout the Fair, “view objectively as a symbolic event, the fair does indeed suggest a disordered and confused culture.” (10) Fair organizers were desperate to present as many sides of America as they could to the rest of the world, attempting to portray America a diverse and well-rounded nation.  By including as many exhibitions from foreign countries in Court of Honor buildings and on the Midway, the message became mixed between “cultural dependence or independence…Since achieving nationhood Americans had suffered from a sort of schizophrenia, first demanding the creation of a proud, distinctly indigenous art, then looking eastward to Europe for its tastes and artifacts.”(11)

            The World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893 was organized to celebrate Columbus’s 1492 voyage.  “It seems ironic that the city of Chicago decided not to celebrate in 1992 the five hundredth anniversary of the voyage of Christopher Columbus to the New World.  A century earlier it had jousted fiercely with several other American cities for the privilege (and profit) of hosing the quadricentennial of that fabled event.” (12) The excitement and enthusiasm that surrounded the World’s Fairs of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is missing from the world today.  Perhaps we should bring back those cultural institutions to show off how just how far the world has come and how far it will go. 

 

(1)  Muccigrosso, Robert. Celebrating The New World: Chicago’s Columbian Exposition of 1893. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1993, 179.

(2)  Burg, David F. Chicago’s White City of 1893. Lexington, KY: The University Press of Kentucky, 1976, xiii.

(3)  Muccigrosso, 15.

(4)  Badger, Reid. The Great American Fair: The World’s Columbian Exposition & American Culture. Chicago: Nelson Hall, 1979,115.

(5)  Muccigrosso, 51.

(6)  Larson, Erik. The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America. New York: Crown Publishers, 2003,374.

(7)  Muccigrosso, 186.

(8)  Burg, 303.

(9)  Muccigrosso, 192.

(10) Burg, 336.

(11) Badger, 120.

(12) Muccigrosso, 64.

(13) Ibid., ix.

 

May 1, 1893

            The day has finally arrived, the gates have finally opened and now it seems like the whole world has come to see the great Columbian Exposition.  Last nights rain hasn’t dissipated but that hasn’t stopped the Fair’s organizers from putting together a grand display for the opening day.  It’s clear that organizers have tried to divert focus from the missing pieces of the fair but “it was not expected that the Exposition would reach perfection of readiness at exactly the day set for the opening exercises…because no great exposition has been strictly complete in all its departments upon its opening day.” (1) So here I stand in the midst of what is thought to be a nearly a quarter of a million people waiting to hear President Cleveland officially open Exposition.

            It’s amazing that such a large crowd is waiting so patiently in this inclement weather.  I guess when people are determined to be a part of something they’ll brave whatever elements of nature they have to for the opportunity to be a part of history.  Perhaps this sense of order is due to the genius of Frederick Law Olmsted whose theories on social reform through landscaping lead to the creation of Central Park.  “Key individuals associated with the celebration, such as [Daniel H.] Burnham and Olmsted, [have been] genuinely concerted with disorder, urban and otherwise as a growing national tendency.” (2) The Exposition has been created as the perfect model for the American city.  The grand architecture, the sublime landscape and a pervasive sense of beauty hit you when you first enter the fair.  “Sentimental, ironic, or sober, authors [have] perceived in the White City either a benign or elevating fairyland or an object lesson of what a desirable urban environment might be – or both.  What they [have seen] was the ideal American city as it might have been or could become.” (3)

            The description of the Fair as a fairyland is pretty apt.  With the different buildings housing specifically typed exhibits and the Midway Plaisance operating as a living exhibit of foreign culture, the Exposition is a lot like Disneyland.  Of course, it’s most likely because of “a carpenter and furniture-maker named Elias Disney, who in the coming years would tell many stories about the construction of this magical realm beside the lake.” (4)

Missing from today’s opening is George Ferris’s famous wheel which is still being constructed and is set to open within the next couple months.  During the planning of the Fair, the architects and organizers had not intended to include an element to counter the great Eiffel Tower of the Paris Exposition of 1889.  George W. Ferris, “having conceived of a giant wheel years earlier, and now with an opportunity to construct a machine that would serve ‘as a medium of observation for passengers’ and ‘as one of the architectural monuments at the Fair,’ invested $25,000 for a concession.  He next incorporated with others to expend more than $250,000 to erect the wheel near the center of the Midway Plaisance and next to the twenty-foot-high replica of the Eiffel Tower.” (5) The Fair’s organizing committee, doubting Ferris’s ability to create such a massive feat of engineering, delayed his concession by nearly six months.   Since the Ferris Wheel is not ready for the opening day, “the exposition [will] lose its 50 percent share of the wheel’s revenue for [the first] fifty-one days [and an] overall boost in admission that the wheel [will] generate and that Burnham so desperately [wants].  Instead it [stands] as a vivid advertisement of the fair’s incomplete condition.” (6)

The Fair is the quadrennial celebration of Columbus’s voyage west and the “discovery of America.”  Of course, Frederick Jackson Turner will deliver his famous thesis “The Significance of the Frontier in American History” where he ostensibly declares the West has been won as the American Frontier is now closed.  “The Columbian Exposition [reflects] the mixed emotions of Americans about the wilderness and urban life as well as their desire to make the best of both worlds.  Wherever visitors [go] they [can] see evidence of attempts to preserve and harmonize the natural and the artificial.” (7) This harmony is due to the work of Frederick Law Olmsted, for whom the Columbian Exposition was a culminating achievement. “The landscape design [is] fundamental to the White City’s unity.” (8)

As I stand in the Court of Honor, I can’t wait till the pomp and circumstance is over and I’m free to roam the fair.  I’ve heard many things about the Midway Plaisance, a veritable cultural circus extending a mile from Jackson Park to Washington Park.  While many scoffed at the idea to include such a diversion, Harlow N. Higinbotham, president of the board of directors for the Exposition argued that “the eye and mind needed relief’ from the stately Court of Honor.  The Midway granted the ‘opportunity for isolating…special features, thus preventing jarring contrast between the beautiful buildings and the illimitable exhibits on the one hand, and the amusing, distracting, ludicrous, and noisy attractions’ on the other.” (9) The restaurants, amusements and exhibits on the Midway come countries all around the world.  Entire villages have traveled to the fair as part of ethnological displays to entertain and educate visitors.  “The exotic entertainments [include] Persian, Japanese, and Indian bazaars, a Moorish palace, a Chinese village and Sol Bloom’s Algerian and Tunisian village, which [includes] a Bedouin tent village, a Moorish café, and a “concert” hall for musical, juggling, and dancing performances.” (10)

President Cleveland is just about to switch on the electric key that will proclaim the Fair officially open and I’ll soon be off to explore.

 

(1)  Truman, Benjamin C, and others. History of the World’s Fair. Philadelphia: Mammoth Publishing Co, 1893, 155.

(2)  Muccigrosso, Robert. Celebrating The New World: Chicago’s Columbian Exposition of 1893. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1993, 86.

(3)  Burg, David F. Chicago’s White City of 1893. Lexington, KY: The University Press of Kentucky, 1976, 296.

(4)  Larson, Erik. The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America. New York: Crown Publishers, 2003,153.

(5)  Muccigrosso, 176.

(6)  Larson, 280.

(7)  Muccigrosso, 126.

(8)  Burg, 302.

(9)  Muccigrosso, 154.

(10) Badger, Reid. The Great American Fair: The World’s Columbian Exposition & American Culture. Chicago: Nelson Hall, 1979,107.

April 30, 1983

People have always said you can lose yourself in books but to read a book and find yourself in the past is truly a bizarre turn of events.  I picked up Eric Larson’s “The Devil in the White City,” having purchased it a couple summers back while visiting Chicago.  I’ve always been fascinated with World’s Fairs and Chicago’s Columbian Exposition seems to have been the grandest of them all.  I guess Larson’s narrative was compelling enough to pull me through the space-time continuum and now I stand in the pouring rain outside the gates of Daniel H. Burnham’s “White City.”  From what I’ve read so far the Fair is set to open tomorrow, May 1^st, so I suppose I’m just in time for all the action.

To stand at the gates, even in the rain, is to see the American ideal writ large in these massive buildings.  As Director-General Colonel George R. Davis says in the opening of the guidebook I picked up, “When the gates of the World’s Columbian Exposition have been closed it will be time enough to impress its lessons upon the world.  To attempt to do so know would be premature, and perhaps misleading.” (1) Standing on the outside of the grand exhibition, I can see that the events that will unfold behind these gates will change the world.

The Exposition is in celebration of the four hundredth anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s discovery of America in 1492 but the idea originated at the 1876 American Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia.  The Centennial Exposition really set the stage for the Columbian Exposition, “In a few weeks it did much to remove the unfavorable impressions existing against this country in the minds of Europeans.” (2) When the 1893 Exhibition was announced, the world rallied behind it and even distant countries “especially from a number whose governments have experienced occasional strained relations not long before,” pledged money and support. (3) No country has been turned away in its request to participate in the Fair as the “United States is on friendly terms with every nation, and every nation has accepted her invitation.  Indeed, the chief difficulty has been to satisfy their demands for space.” (4) Even from the outside, the size of the fair is daunting.  I hope I have the stamina to see it all.

I’ve heard that the people of the world have been inundated with publicity for the fair for over two years; materials have been produced in every major language and newspapers all over the globe have been given information free of charge.  “It is estimated that…an average of 2,500 columns have been printed…The greatest number of documents mailed any one week was 249,000, while the average number was 60,000.” (5) In Chicago, entire newspapers and other special publications have been devoted to the fair.  “The result [is] that the people of all countries [have been] made perfectly familiar with the scope and magnitude of the Exposition a year before it’s opening.” (6)

Perhaps the excitement around the Fair is due to its location.  Chicago is, “in itself a phenomenal city – so gigantic, so young, so rich, strong and powerful – is the very essence of American progress.” (7) However, competition for the site was fierce: New York, St. Louis and Washington D. C. were all desirous of the privilege of hosting but Chicago demonstrated the strongest showing.  It is due, in part, to the citizens of Chicago themselves who created a “united effort for the carrying out of a project which has resulted in success so complete and so magnificent as to break down all prejudices, and to compel the admiration of the civilized world.” (8) In the “first ballot taken in Congress as to the location, [Chicago] led New York by more than forty votes.” (9)

            Standing at the gates it is remarkable to think that Chicago’s Jackson Park was merely an overgrown swamp just two short years ago.  According to the lore of the site, “The Jackson Park of 1891 and the Jackson Park of 1893 present a system of transformation that cannot be adequately described.  Suffice it to say that the Jackson Park of 1891 was about as uninviting a strip of sand ridges and scrub oaks.  Two years ago this unsightly strip did not possess one redeeming feature except area and location.” (10) It truly is a remarkable sight to behold, even in the rain, the dignified buildings of the Court of Honor, the manmade lakes and the lush landscaping trick you into believing that this magical land has always been here. 

            The magnificent transformation was primarily conducted, “under the general supervision of Director of Works, Daniel H. Burnham, and to him, perhaps more than to any other one man is due the daring conception of the whole and general harmony of design.” (11) Burnham’s vision of a White City is brought to life in the majestic Court of Honor at the helm of Jackson Park.  The thirteen buildings in the Court house the major displays of the fair.  From the Administration building, a “magnificent structure…seen from almost every point within the exhibition grounds” to the Children’s Building, featuring “everything likely to instruct or amuse children,” (12), the architecture is remarkable in its diversity.  Looking at these magnificent buildings, you can’t help but feel a sense of sadness since they’re only built to last for the length of the fair.

            In preparation for the big opening day tomorrow, I’ve scanned the guidebook to make a plan for my tour.  The scope of the exhibitions just within the White City is amazing, I’ve been warned that “it will require a day to walk through these exhibits even [if] you give them no more than passing notice.” (13) I’m most excited to see what’s inside the Anthropological Buildings as they say “any student of paleontology, geology, or natural history who has any difficulties to solve…now enjoys the opportunities of a lifetime.” (14) The exhibitions feature primitive arts, geological models and imagined version of the America Columbus landed upon in 1492, “inhabited by representatives of the respective tribes dressed in the costumes of their forefathers and engaged in their characteristic industries.” (15)

            It’s obvious that electricity, the newest and fastest growing technology of the time, is displayed throughout the fair but has its home in the Electricity Building.  Electrical development is occurring a such a rate that “to the electrician, ten years is a century, and even in one year all of his pet theories may vanish under the light of some new discovery.” (16) The widespread use of electricity throughout the fair has given organizers the opportunity to hold after-hours activities with all sorts of electrical displays. 

            The Fine Arts Building has already been called “the greatest thing since Athens.” (17) Organizers worried that museums and galleries in countries with great artistic histories like France, Germany and Italy, would refuse to donate works to the Exposition.  “It was said that Europe would not contribute its art collections, or any considerable portion of them, for the reason that Chicago was generally believed abroad to be a city far removed from the centre of education and culture in the United States.” (18)

            Of course, the most socially important building in the Court of Honor is the Women’s Building, which was provided for expressly by the Congressional motions that created the Exhibition altogether.  The achievements of women in art, culture and society have been put on display but there will be no competitive exhibits.  “The exhibit shows that women has not only entered into competition with man in the arts and sciences, and in the more delicate achievements of handiwork, but in the fields from which for hundreds of years, she was excluded simply because of her sex.” (19)

            I don’t know how I got so lucky as to slip back in time to see, in person, something that has always fascinated me but I won’t complain.  The fair opens tomorrow and I have this 600-page guidebook to study for a plan of attack. 

 

 

(1)  White, Trumbull, and WM. Ingleheart.  The World’s Columbian Exposition: Chicago, 1893. Boston: John K. Hastings, 1893, 11.

(2)  Ibid., 32.

(3)  Truman, Benjamin C, and others. History of the World’s Fair. Philadelphia: Mammoth Publishing Co, 1893, 77.

(4)  Flinn, John J. Official Guide of the World’s Columbian Exposition: Midway Plaisance Edition, Chicago: The Columbian Guide Company, 1893, 62.

(5)  Truman, 74.

(6)  Flinn, 30.

(7)  White, 11.

(8)  Truman, 24.

(9)  Flinn, 27.

(10) Truman, 63.

(11) Flinn, 39.

(12) Ibid., 43 and 164.

(13) Ibid. 95.

(14) Truman, 258.

(15) White, 424.

(16) Flinn, 67.

(17) Truman, 376.

(18) White, 334.

(19) Flinn, 122-123.