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 1st, 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.
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