World Columbian Exposition

The World Columbian Exposition (also called The Chicago World's Fair), a World's fair, was held in Chicago in 1893 to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's discovery of the New World. Chicago had beaten New York City, Washington, D.C. and St. Louis, Missouri for the honor of hosting the fair. The fair had a profound effect on architecture, the arts, Chicago's self image, and American industrial optimism.

Description

The exposition was located in Jackson Park and on the Midway Plaisance on 630 acres (2.5 km²) in the neighborhoods of Hyde Park and Woodlawn. 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. The Director of the American Academy in Rome, Francis David Millet, directed the painted mural decorations. Indeed, it was a coming-of-age for the arts and architecture of the "American Renaissance". Most of the buildings were based on classical architecture, and the area taken up by the fair around the Court of Honor was known as "The White City". Louis Sullivan's polychrome proto-Modern Transportation Building was an outstanding exception, but his opinion was that the "White City" had set back modern American architecture by forty years.

Related Topics:
Jackson Park - Midway Plaisance - Hyde Park - Woodlawn - Frederick Law Olmsted - Beaux-Arts - Architecture - Daniel Burnham - Francis David Millet - American Renaissance - Louis Sullivan

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Early in July, a Wellesley College English teacher named Katharine Lee Bates was a visitor at the fair, and was rather more impressed by it than was Sullivan. In her poem (later a song) America the Beautiful, the phrase, Thine alabaster cities gleam, was inspired by the "White City".

Related Topics:
July - Wellesley College - Katharine Lee Bates - America the Beautiful

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Some famous visitors to the fair included Thomas Edison, Susan B. Anthony, Jane Addams, Scott Joplin, Annie Oakley, Edweard Muybridge, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Frederick Douglass, Henry Blake Fuller, J.P. Morgan, Henry Adams, Andrew Carnegie, W.D. Howells, Hamlin Garland, and President Benjamin Harrison.

Related Topics:
Thomas Edison - Susan B. Anthony - Jane Addams - Scott Joplin - Annie Oakley - Edweard Muybridge - Paul Laurence Dunbar - Frederick Douglass - Henry Blake Fuller - J.P. Morgan - Henry Adams - Andrew Carnegie - W.D. Howells - Hamlin Garland - Benjamin Harrison

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McKim, Mead and White designed the Agriculture building. Of the more than 200 buildings erected for the fair, the only one which still stands in place is the Palace of Fine Arts. From the time the fair closed until 1920, the building housed the Field Columbian Museum (now the relocated Field Museum of Natural History). In 1931 the building re-opened as the Museum of Science and Industry.

Related Topics:
McKim, Mead and White - 1920 - Field Museum of Natural History - 1931 - Museum of Science and Industry

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The only other significant building that survived the fair is the Norway pavilion, a building now preserved at a museum called "Little Norway" in Blue Mounds, Wisconsin. http://www.littlenorway.com/

Related Topics:
Norway - Blue Mounds, Wisconsin

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The Fine Arts Building was purposely constructed to last. The other buildings at the fair were all intended to be temporary. Their facades were made not of stone, but of a mixture of plaster and hemp called "staff." Architecture critics derided the structures as "decorated sheds". The "White City," however, so impressed everyone who saw it (at least before air pollution began to darken the facades) that plans were considered to refinish the exteriors in marble or some other material. Sadly, these plans had to be abandoned in July 1894 when much of the fair grounds was destroyed in a fire. (The fire occurred at the height of the Pullman Strike; since the strikers set other fires that very week, it is possible the fire was set by disgruntled Pullman employees.)

Related Topics:
July - 1894 - Pullman Strike

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Jackson Park was eventually returned to its status as a public park, and the lagoon was reshaped to give it a more natural appearance. The Midway Plaisance, a park-like boulevard which extends west from Jackson Park, forms the southern boundary of the University of Chicago, which was being built as the fair was closing. The U of C's football team were the original "Monsters of the Midway".

Related Topics:
University of Chicago - Monsters of the Midway

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The Museum of Science and Industry was fronted by a paved parking lot for many years. In the 1990s, an ambitious project was undertaken, to build an underground garage surfaced by natural grass, thus extending the park completely around the building.

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