A nightly scene of fairy-like loveliness: Illumination of the 1893 White City

Many of the most effusive and eloquent descriptions of the fairgrounds of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition focus on the nightly illumination. This electrical spectacle, augmented with flame torches and fireworks, dazzled visitors in Chicago’s Jackson Park. Some cried. Others thought they were glimpsing the heavenly beyond. The luminous poetry seemed like magic, but was actually cutting-edge science. Ponderous steam engines generating some 17,000 horse power drove great dynamos that created the electrical current feeding the 8,000 arc lamps and 130,000 incandescent bulbs that lit the grounds and buildings.

The illumination so impressed a student visiting from North Carolina that he crafted an article, reprinted below, for a student journal of Wake Forest College (now University).

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Assume that we are in Chicago—in Jackson Park—standing by the Administration Building. It is conceded to be the architectural gem of the Exposition. While it covers the comparatively small area of 262 feet square, it lifts its graceful proportions to the airy height of 277 feet. On each of its four fronts is a richly wrought portal, thirty-seven feet broad and fifty feet high.

Through either generous portal you may enter its spacious rotunda, 120 feet in diameter, which rises from the floor to the inner dome, a clear space of 188 feet. Around the base of the dome, on the outside, over the four beautiful corner pavilions, are groups of colossal statuary symbolic of the arts and sciences. And at that height, 136 feet from the ground, encircling the aluminum-covered dome, is a safely balustraded walk eighteen feet wide. Standing on that airy promenade and looking eastward toward Lake Michigan, you have below and before you a bird’s-eye view of the fitly named Court of Honor.

A scene of fairy-like loveliness

Here the Wizard, Electricity, creates nightly a scene of fairy-like loveliness.

Mark, if you please, the salient features of this Court of Honor.

We look down upon an open space 600 feet wide from north to south. This space, preserving its width of 600 feet, or nearly one-eighth of a mile, extends eastward toward the lake nearly a half mile, to what is called the Peristyle. That structure marks the further end of the Court by a kind of colonnade from north to south, consisting mainly of forty-eight imposing columns sixty feet high. They represent our forty-eight States and Territories. Each column bears the coat of arms of a State and is surmounted by a symbolic statue. On our right, bordering the Court, is Machinery Hall, with a frontage of 800 feet. Beyond it, tracing further east the right border, is another front of 800 feet, reaching to the Peristyle. That is the Agricultural Building, surmounted high in air with the striking statue of Diana, gracefully poised on one foot, bent bow in hand, and breeze-blown scarf from her shoulders.

On our left, marking the Court’s north border, are the Mining Building, the Electricity Building and the Liberal Arts Building, the latter reaching to the Peristyle.

These structures, of charmingly varied architecture, with the Administration Building, on which we stand, at the west end, border or enclose the Court of Honor—the space one-eighth of a mile wide from north to south, and a half mile long from west to east. Within this favored enclosure is a tranquil sheet of water, covering more than ten acres—the Great Basin [sic], it is called—its width about 300 feet, and its length some 1,500 feet. It extends from near the Peristyle to within five hundred feet of the building from which we look.

At the near end of the Basin are the two electric fountains, each sixty feet in diameter, whose waters shoot up to a height of 150 feet, and between them is the unrivaled artistic fountain of MacMonnies. A short distance beyond the fountains, the South Canal flows out under a broad, arched bridge between Machinery Hall and the Agricultural Building. And opposite is the North Canal, under a similar bridge between the Electricity Building and the Liberal Arts Building.

Lustrous in the light

At the far end of the Basin, near the Peristyle, there rises forty feet out of the water a massive pedestal, on which is a statue sixty feet high, representing the Republic—its total height being thus 100 feet. The majestic figure is lustrous in the light, for from foot to head it is coated with pure gold!

The scene thus crudely sketched is, of course, enlivened by moving throngs upon the broad bridges, the ample plaza beneath us, the wide promenade on either side of the Great Basin, and along the Peristyle; not to speak of gaily-colored gondolas busily plying the waters, and merry-freighted electric launches swiftly passing from landing to landing, or gliding in or out under either bridge of North or South Canal.

But now, evening draws her dusky veil over this animated scene of artistic triumphs. The shadows deepen, the restless groups and the still statuary fade from view. Even the pronounced architectural outlines are only dimly discerned.

The magic touch of electricity!

And now, the magic touch of electricity! Darkness flees—yielding quickly to the generous light which instantly glows from thousands of incandescent lamps all around and about and above the ample Court of Honor. They trace in light each leading line and angle of the long-extended facades and multiplied domes and pinnacles of Machinery Hall and the Agricultural Building on our right, of the Peristyle in the distance, and of the Liberal Arts, Electricity and Mining Buildings on our left. And all around the base of the balustrade enclosing the Basin, and along the arching canal bridges, flashes out a line of countless lights, each duplicated in the broad water-mirror. And the balcony on which we stand, at the head of the spacious Court, and especially the graceful dome above us, in lines of brightness curving to its radiance-crowned summit, 277 feet in air, is all ablaze with electric lights!

The good-humored, jostling throngs upon the bridges, the gathered multitude upon the plaza below, the gliding gondolas and launches, and the bewildering architecture, all are again before us! while over all, bends as before, the serenity of sky and stars.

Now, all eyes are turned upon the wondrous electric fountains. Briefly, the upward play of water is illuminated by strong arc-lights below, the light concentrated by burnished reflectors and projected up through shifting colored glasses in the floor of the fountain. Thus its waters, springing upward 150 feet in graceful jets and sheets, which end and fall in feathery spray, are now a pale green, now a delicate purple, now pearly white, now rich crimson—the tints brightening and shifting in endless pleasing variety.

See the great search-lights

But look! see the great search-lights upon the roofs of the buildings. What is a search-light? It is the most powerful of electric arc-lights, placed near the bottom of a drum-like case, which is so mounted that its open glass face can be easily turned in any direction—upward or downward or sideways. Within the case, back of the light, is a burnished parabolic mirror, made of silver on glass, which concentrates all the rays and throws forward the beam of intense light to a great distance.

One of these search-lights is the most powerful ever made. You see it yonder, high up on the roof of the Liberal Arts Building, 250 feet above the ground. It throws a good light upon objects eighteen miles away. By its light a man eight miles distant can read a newspaper. It can be plainly seen in Milwaukee, eighty-five miles from Chicago.

Now look! A search-light is turned on the high central arch of the distant Peristyle—above it—on the splendid group of statuary, emblematic of the world’s progress. We see, conspicuous against the back-ground of night, every figure, to the minutest detail. Another turn, and it bathes in brightness the main entrance of Agricultural Hall, showing vividly its elaborate decoration. Then, sweeping the long facade on our right, it floods the south bridge with almost sunlight—perhaps revealing your friend in the crowd. Suddenly, the long comet-like stream of brightness from the distant roof is lifted from the bridge and slowly turned eastward and upward, until it clothes in glistening white the graceful statue of Diana, poised high above Agricultural Hall.

Shifting the glass at the search-light, its color instantly changes—Diana is tinted green! Again, and she is crimson-hued against the dark sky!

The Cloud Projector

But turn quickly to your left, for in that quarter a bomb shoots high in air. It bursts, forming a broad, floating, white cloud. And see, upon the cloud appears a weird placard in large letters—an announcement of to-morrow’s attractions—riveting every eye! A slide is changed, and lo! upon the cloud the smiling features of a well-known face! That is the work of a search-light, ingeniously arranged as a “cloud projector.”

In view of all this variety of brilliant displays, we may concede the reality of an Arab Aladdin, and yet doubt whether his wonderful lamp ever conjured up such charming witcheries as are wrought in the Exposition’s Court of Honor, night after night, by the magic touch of electricity.

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SOURCE

Lanneau, John F. “New Uses of Electricity” Wake Forest Student Nov. 1893, p. 44–55.