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.
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