The newspaper account reprinted below is a reminder that marble was mostly a myth at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition. The destination for this faux stone block may have been the Ruins of Yucatan exhibit.

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Built for a Heavy Load

People who were on the platform of the intramural opposite the Anthropological Building yesterday about 3 o’clock were treated to a sight which almost made them doubt their eyes.

A wagon drove up whose heavy wheels and sturdy timbers seemed best fitted for carrying Krupp guns. The axles creaked, or seemed to creak, under the enormous block of Assyrian marble some eight feet square and four feet thick. Its sculptured sides were covered with the moss of ages; it was hoary beyond description and appeared like one of the very corner stones of earth’s first foundation. The heavy wagon stopped groaning and two men jumped lightly up beside that giant stone.

“Shove her up on end, Billy,” said one of them across the slab to the other, and that other bent his sturdy back, clinched his fingers under the sturdy mass, and began to lift, and the mass began to move.

The spectators could not realize it as the great fragment came slowly up and up until it stood on end. And then they saw its hollow interior, and that block was made of nice, clean staff, barely three-quarters of an inch in thickness.

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SOURCE

“Western Cities at War” Chicago Times Jun. 25, 1893, p. 7.