The Greatest Crowd

This is Part 13 of our series “Opening Day of the World’s Fair,” which explores the events of May 1, 1893, at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. The full series can be found here.

They saw a beautiful sight

When the Opening Day ceremonies were over, visitors had time to look around the fairgrounds.

They saw a beautiful sight: a forest of great buildings decorated with flags, banners, and streamers in artistic designs and harmony of color; graceful statuary posing on pedestals and looking down from niches wherever it could be placed to advantage; fountains throwing up might streams of water which at its topmost broke into a cloud of spray; and beautiful little bodies of water on whose surface silently glided steam and electric launches and graceful Venetian gondolas.

They saw, too, at the head of the Grand Basin and just inside the Peristyle, a golden statue towering high above anything else of the kind in sight. On either side, plats of grass brought into sharp relief the snow-white balustrades.

A great international feast of love

People wandered around the grounds during the afternoon without let of hindrance, taking in the beauties of the place until weary limbs refused to bear the burden any longer.

And people themselves formed a big part of the show. There were so many of them, and so many different kinds of people. About an hour before dusk the grounds had become the scene of a great international feast of love.

Until sunset, the great crowd of visitors wandered about the Exposition. After it was sufficiently dark for the full beauty of the illumination to be seen, the order was given in Machinery Hall, and the switches were turned for every circuit in the Administration Building. A blaze of light shot up to the heavens and was mirrored back into the waters of the Lagoon and Grand Basin and from the white sides of the neighboring buildings.

The greatest crowd Chicago has ever seen

Reports on May 2 estimated that the crowd assembled in the Grand Basin for the Opening Ceremony had been anywhere from 50,000 to 300,000. A “careful and conservative mathematical calculation, made on the best data available” put the number at 125,000. The tally of total visitors inside the fairground, however, was close to 400,000. 242,000 people bought tickets at the gate and another 150,000 arrived with pre-purchased souvenir tickets. An additional 125,000 tickets had been distributed to stockholders of the Exposition corporation.

At the time, commentators boasted that the Opening Day throng was “the greatest crowd Chicago has ever seen or probably ever will witness.”

Victim of the weed arrested

Eighteen arrests were made on the grounds on Opening Day, and another fifty peddlers were arrested outside the park entrances.

The first arrest of the day was for a “victim of the weed” who boisterously refused to extinguish his cigar upon entering the gate. A dozen more arrests for smoking violations followed. Two men jumped fences to avoid paying the fifty-cent admission price. Four other arrests were “of a more serious character.”

Lewis Adams picked the pocket of one Mrs. Adams at the 61st Street Illinois Central station. Officers caught him in the act and promptly took him to the Woodlawn police station. During the Opening Ceremony, at about 11:30 o’clock, a Miss Jane Adamson had her pocket picked by Henry Cohn in the Administration Building. The thief was caught red handed by a Columbian guard. Several sources record that Jane Addams of Hull House had her purse snatched on Opening Day.

A drunken man caused a disturbance in the Mines and Mining Building where he was “making an unsolicited exhibit of himself.” He claimed to be the brother-in-law of a Chicago Alderman, and therefore had immunity. As far as is known, his name was not Adams, Addams, or Adamson.

Just after the ceremony, a Columbian guard arrested a man for climbing over a rail on the grandstand. He turned out to be a newspaper correspondent from Vienna simply trying to exit the press section.

A few lost children found their way into the care of the Columbian Guard before being reunited with their parents.

No visitor experienced serious injuries on Opening Day, although there was one near fatality among the fair workers. Amile Miller, who worked for the Intramural Railroad, fell from the elevated track in the southeast section of the park and fractured his skull.

About fifty people received treatment in the fairgrounds hospital. Most suffered from exhaustion caused by simple over-excitement from all the wonders of the Fair.

May 1 was an exciting day and just the beginning of the World’s Columbian Exposition.

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SOURCES

(See our note about sources here.)

“And All Was Peace” Chicago Inter Ocean May 2, 1893, p. 4.

“Buildings Brightly Lighted” Chicago Daily Tribune May 2, 1893, p. 5.

“Hundreds of Thousands There” Chicago Herald May 2, 1893, p. 2.

“Near Half a Million” Chicago Daily Tribune May 2, 1893, p. 3.

“The World’s Columbian Exposition” Harper’s Weekly May 13, 1893, p. 2.

“Vienna Correspondent Arrested” Chicago Daily Tribune May 2, 1893, p. 5.

“Without Disorder” Chicago Daily Tribune May 2, 1893, p. 3.