“Very sterling qualities about the Hoosiers”: Lunch in the Indiana State Building

Hoosiers visiting the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago were mighty proud of the Indiana State Building. Designed by one of distinguished Chicago architect Henry Ives Cobb, the French Gothic structure stood in the southwest section of the state buildings on a lovely spot along the North Pond and nestled between the state buildings of Illinois, California, and Wisconsin.

One of the twelve state buildings to receive an award for beauty of design and merit in its display, the Indiana Building featured a twenty-foot-wide veranda wrapping around the lower story, from which four entrances led inside. Visitors to the World’s Fair, from Indiana and elsewhere, enjoyed a sit on this beautiful porch to take in the lovely views and rest their weary feet.

Two newspaper articles reported on some tension regarding those trying to eat their lunch. This excerpt from “Beauty at the Fair” (Akron Daily Democrat Sep. 16, 1893, p. 4) describes the popularity of the Indiana Building as a lunch spot:

“There is a deal of dry fun in and about the Indiana building in the course of a day. Its position on the great western avenue enables one on the west porch to get a good view of the incoming and outgoing crowds, and to me it is a great consolation to look at them. I see so many people homelier than myself. It is a frequent remark that all the homely people in the United States must have come to this fair, but the women say it is the fair which makes them look homely, partly by contrast with the beauties of art and more because they get so weary and wilted. On the porch I often hear the expression, “If they have any handsome women in this country, they’d better send ’em on, for we’ve seen enough of the other kind.”

At noon in this building there is a sight for the satirist. Every chair and bench is in use, and all available space inside and on the porches is jammed. The managers have had to put up a notice that for luncheon purposes this building is reserved for Indiana people, and there are more than enough of them. Everyone is eating as fast as nature will allow. Cheese, pickles, bread and butter vanish as if by magic, and cold chicken goes as if it had renewed its wings to fly where all good chicken goes. Scraps, bones, fruit skins, paper boxes and other lunch holders are thrown upon the floor, for if one tries to throw them out he, especially she, will certainly hit somebody, and when all is over the place looks like a provision store taken by siege and looted by the victorious soldiery.

When the crowd scatters, one looking on the debris feels as if he could never eat again, but in a few minutes the scavengers have it in fairly good condition, and a few of us linger on the porches to rest and smoke.”

“A Word of Precaution” from the Kansas Semi-Weekly Capital (Jun. 15, 1893, p. 6) pokes fun at visitors from a certain southern Indiana county [https://www.poseycountyin.gov/].

“Indiana is a great state, that’s a fact. A stranger walked into its State Building the other day and the first thing to catch his eye was the legend hanging everywhere:

GO UPSTAIRS TO EAT
YOUR LUNCH

The visitor strolled on until he met one in authority.

“You have a very fine building,” said he

“Yes, just so-so,” was the response.

“Do you know, I think there are some very sterling qualities about the Hoosiers,” went on the stranger. “They have a deep vein of kindness in their disposition.”

“Yes, they’re kinder good-natured,” said the one in authority.

“Yes, indeed. There isn’t any of the states so hospitable as Indiana. Why you even stick signs about inviting the people to go upstairs and eat their lunch.”

“Why, you blamed fool,” said the one in authority, looking at the visitor with contempt, “that’s so these Posey county jays shan’t eat their grub on the veranda and parlor floor.”