[Previous installments of this series include Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.]

“John Root made the Fair until he died,” asserted Owen F. Aldis. We present this fourth part of Harriet Monroe’s “The World’s Columbian Exposition” from John Wellborn Root: A Study of His Life and Work (Houghton, Mifflin & Company, 1896) on the anniversary of John Root’s death, on January 15, 1891.

In this section, Monroe describes the continuing chaos and “hot war” in the fall of 1890 to finalize the site of the 1893 World’s Fair, with renewed proposals for using Lake Front Park downtown and Washington Park on the west end of the Midway.

Part 4: The Great Battle for a Site

And now the great battle for a site, which had been settled and unsettled so many times, had to be fought all over again. Some of the Commissioners drove to the parks, and recited among their colleagues their disgust with the swampy wilderness where Chicago proposed to receive the world. They made loud demands upon the South Park Board for the unconditional surrender of Washington Park, whose broad grassy meadow offered a more promising welcome. When that body stood out firmly against the demolition of its roads and groves and ponds, granting the use of the park only under restrictions, the Commissioners and Directors were plunged into hot war, the former threatening to compel Congress to remove the Fair from Chicago, and the latter defying them. The city newspapers, in the meantime, were urging any surrender to save the Fair; and those of other cities were jeering at Chicago’s inability to find a site. This was the situation at the sessions of Saturday, November 15; threats were thrown back and forth between the rival bodies, and on each side the law was laid down in forcible language. It was the first heat in the long contest which finally established the supremacy of the Chicago Directory and the redundancy of the National Commission. Before adjournment a conference was arranged for Monday, when committees from both bodies, and another from the visiting Congressional committee, should meet and discuss the vexed question.

At this meeting the consulting architects were invited to report. Root felt that it was “now or never” for Jackson Park, and that the decision must be wrested from passion to reason. He felt that the National Commissioners were not imaginative—they judged blindly from present conditions. The artists must reveal to their mind’s eye the completed work, lest that dream of stately palaces mirrored in clear waters should disappear forever. They had until Monday to avert the threatened calamity and make peace between the rival bodies—a Sunday in which to plan their victory for art. On that day the enemy had never been stronger. The Sunday Herald published an interview with the Chairman of the Committee appointed by the National Commission for the morrow’s conference, which reported him as saying: “If the directors do not abandon their position a deadlock will ensue, and in that event no presidential proclamation, calling for foreign exhibits and state cooperation, will be issued.” War clouds hung heavily over the rival bodies which divided the government of the Fair, and the city was in despair.

Root’s study for central pavilion of a main building for Washington Park.

But Messrs. Olmsted, Codman, and Root had their heads together in council. Codman wrote a brief in favor of the lake-shore site; but, as it was deemed expedient to take the attitude of an impartial judge instead of that of a special pleader, this brief was not presented. Root embodied the ideas and researches of the two landscape architects with his own, and formulated the whole into a long report which both firms signed, the original rough manuscript of which exists in his handwriting, except the three closing paragraphs, which may be lost from the manuscript, or which Mr. Olmsted may have contributed. This report is a good example of Root’s exact and logical style when writing for business men of business matters. It considered impartially the advantages and disadvantages of each of the two sites from the six points of view of accessibility, relationship of parks to each other, cost of preparation, cost of maintenance, disposition of buildings, and cost of restoration. It presented figures and estimates, strictly tabulated so as to appeal to men of business, which showed a net advantage of $59,000 in favor of Jackson Park. It showed that if Washington Park were chosen, hardly a square yard of its surface could remain undemolished: piles would have to be driven for heavy buildings; groves destroyed to afford avenues and vistas; soil turned up everywhere for water-pipes and drains; surface levels modified; and the beautiful meadow, which had seemed to the Commissioners an ideal site for the Fair, utterly wiped out by buildings too large for it. And, with all these sacrifices, adequate space could not be obtained for the effective grouping of buildings. Thus the apparent advantages of this inland site gradually disappeared under his logic; and when, in reviewing Jackson Park, he showed the value of the lake and lagoons for decoration and transportation, the advantage its wild spaces offered to the designer as “virgin soil to be modeled at will to a large purpose,” no reasonable man could hesitate. Having presented the claims of each park, he concluded:—

“It is difficult for one not experienced in technical consideration of such matters to rightly view this subject. In one case, a park now finished and beautiful is almost totally undone, presenting, during its temporary occupancy by the exposition, scarcely a charm not equally possessed by any piece of wooded prairie, and after its restoration retaining such scars and mutilations as may still, after so many years, be witnessed in Fairmount Park as relics of the Exposition of 1876.

“In the other case, a piece of ground is presented, like clay to the hand of a sculptor, with which anything within the artist’s capacity may be accomplished. Its natural advantages are those which are most characteristic of Chicago—its proximity to Lake Michigan and its free use, not only of the rare beauty of this great sheet of water, but of such festive and Venice-like lagoons as may be supplied from it, imparting to the whole Fair grouped about them double enchantment.

“Upon the subject of the grandeur, beauty, and impressiveness of the central group of buildings, … their influence upon the imagination, we are required to give an opinion for which we shall be responsible before the world as artists. That opinion is that the capabilities of Jackson Park for the purposes of the Fair are of a much higher order than those of Washington Park.

“We have many reasons for this opinion, which cannot be presented under the conditions prescribed for this report. But there is one reason so simple that no tangible fact can be more open to immediate and general apprehension. It is that this location will associate the Fair with the grandeur and beauty of the one distinguishing natural, historical, and poetic feature of this part of the American continent,—its great inland seas.

“Let the central buildings of the Fair be placed, with all possible exercise of architectural and landscape art, upon Washington Park, and the result will be no better than could be obtained with equal art on any flat plain anywhere in the world. Let them be placed on Jackson Park, in such relation with Lake Michigan as is easily practicable, and the result will have a grandeur that no World’s Fair hitherto has ever possessed.”

Root’s study for exposition buildings in Jackson Park.

This report was printed in pamphlet form and distributed among the Commissioners on Monday morning. At the conference meeting of the three committees, Root took the floor, and, with the aid of maps and plans, explained and amplified the report. Mr. Harlow N. Higinbotham, afterwards President of the Exposition, in describing the scene, says: “There was no resisting the clearness and force of his reasoning. The Commissioners, who had been so violent on Saturday, threw up their hands and had nothing more to say. Washington Park was saved from destruction, and the Fair went where it belonged.” The newspapers also gave to this report the credit of settling the troublesome question of site. A few days later the very Commissioner, whose strenuous opposition to Jackson Park has been quoted above from the Herald, as Chairman of the Conference Committee recommended that the Commission accept the report and approve the ground plans; and his recommendation was adopted without opposition. I remember how Root laughed over the capitulation of this gentleman, who learned a wholesome lesson of respect for artists, and frankly became their champion.

Mr. Charles L. Hutchinson, who was one of the members of the Executive Committee of the Exposition Directory, and who was in frequent conference with Root before and after his appointment as Consulting Architect, said recently: “You cannot overstate John Root’s services to the Exposition. He wanted Jackson Park when the landscape gardeners and nearly every member of the Committee were opposed to it. In the very beginning of the enterprise, he saw very clearly, more clearly than all others, how beautiful would be the effect of combining land and water in this park; and he persisted until everyone else came around to his opinion. It was his mind, more than any other, which was felt in the initiative of the great enterprise, and to him is due more praise than he will ever receive in this world.” Mr. Owen F. Aldis, and other members of the Grounds and Buildings Committee, are willing also to be quoted on the subject of the Consulting Architect’s services. “John Root made the Fair until he died,” says Mr. Aldis; “or no, I must modify that, because Mr. Olmsted had a share in it; I don’t know how great. From these two men came the artistic impetus of the Columbian Exposition, and it was carried out on the large lines they laid down.”