“I have made up my mind that six months is too short a time for a man to see and study the Fair,” announced Mr. Thomas Carhart in May of 1893. The wealthy Englishman had come to Chicago to squeeze every possible moment out of the great Columbian Exposition. He planned to visit the fairgrounds in Jackson Park every day for the six months the Fair was open!

Mr. Carhart, a resident of Madras, India, for the past thirty-five years, checked himself into the Palmer House Hotel on May 1, Opening Day of the Exposition. He would likely have seen many distinguished guests come and go from the Palmer House during their shorter visits to Chicago during those six months.

“I was at the Paris Exposition for two months,” Carhart explained, “and when I went to my home my mind had just commenced to properly put away the impression I received. After I had figured it all out I reached the conclusion that another three months was needed in Chicago. I came here last Monday, looked the Fair over, and today I wrote my wife and brother in India to come at once, prepared to stay until the closing day.” The Exposition ran from May 1 to October 30, but was closed on four Sundays (May 7, 14, and 21, and July 23). Of the 27,539,521 ticketed admissions to the Exposition, Mr. Carhart accounted for 179 of them.

Henry Ives Cobb’s Fisheries Building held many wonders of the water. [Image from Picturesque Chicago and Guide to the World’s Fair. D.S. Moseley, 1893; digitally edited.]

Within the first week, while much of the fairgrounds was still in a disarray of unpacking exhibits, the Englishman already had found some favorite sights. “The Fisheries and Electricity buildings will take most of my time for in these I find more things to amuse and instruct than in any other, although in all the departments I shall take great interest.”

Another Englishman visiting the Fair recorded that “the spirit that pervades every part of the grounds, indeed the soul of all that has been accomplished, is ‘Immensity.’” Mr. Carhart concurred, stating:

“I am surprised to find that Americans, and especially the people of Chicago, seem to take this wonderful Fair merely as a matter of course. They realize that it is a big thing, but they do not seem to be impressed and awed by its magnificence and it’s great importance. They don’t appear to comprehend the fact that this world has never seen anything like it and that in all probability it never will again. But then, you know, you Americans are so used to big things and their accompanying rush and bustle that the Fair, huge as it is, does not disturb your equanimity. Your life here, as I see it, is 1 continuous rush and the six months extra that is now here will not upset you in the least period of course the Fair will be a success. It is in America.”

SOURCE

“Determined to See All the Fair” Chicago Tribune May 9, 1893, p. 9.