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“Chicago’s White City Devil” on Smithsonian’s MURDEROUS HISTORY

By |2024-06-30T09:33:11-05:00May 9th, 2021|Categories: NEWS, VIDEO|Tags: , |

The latest documentary about the evil doings of H. H. Holmes joins a crowded collection of films and television shows about the “devil in the white city” who killed an unknown number of victims around the time of the World’s Columbian Exposition. It is among the best to date. “Chicago's White City Devil,” the second episode of the Smithsonian Channel’s new series Murderous History, features rather cheesy dramatic scenes along with informative commentary by a group of notable Chicago [...]

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The Ninth Wonder of the World: Turning Day into Night at the 1893 Columbian Exposition

By |2024-04-05T08:26:47-05:00April 6th, 2024|Categories: REPRINTS|Tags: , , , , , , , |

“However grand, complete and astonishing the World's Fair may appear to the public by daylight, it is at night that it can be seen in all its splendor and magnificence,” wrote the World’s Columbian Exposition Illustrated [read the article here]. Another description of the nightly illumination of the Court of Honor comes from the newspaper story reprinted below, originally from an (unknown) Chicago newspaper. Turning Day into Night “After dark at the World's Fair will be one of the [...]

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152. Picturesque World’s Fair – California Sea Lions in the Government Building

By |2023-05-30T05:51:57-05:00May 30th, 2023|Categories: REPRINTS|Tags: , , |

CALIFORNIA SEA LIONS IN THE GOVERNMENT BUILDING. —The California Sea Lions, which afforded such a fine illustration of the taxidermist's skill and attracted so much comment in the Government Building, were like old friends, not merely to Californians who had seen them or their relations, enjoying themselves in the waters of the coast, but to thousands of people familiar with scenes in the parks of the great cities. The Sea Lions exhibited in the Government Building were fine specimens, [...]

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How the Myth of the American Frontier Got Its Start at the 1893 World’s Fair

By |2023-01-08T11:25:05-06:00January 8th, 2023|Categories: NEWS|Tags: , , |

"It was getting late. The lecture hall was stifling from a day of blazing sun, which had tormented the throngs visiting the nearby Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition, a carnival of never-before-seen wonders, like a fully illuminated electric city and George Ferris’ 264-foot-tall rotating observation wheel. Many of the hundred or so historians attending the conference, a meeting of the American Historical Association (AHA), were dazed and dusty from an afternoon spent watching Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show at a [...]

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The Indian guru who spoke at the 1893 World’s Fair

By |2022-10-08T09:53:16-05:00October 11th, 2022|Categories: NEWS|Tags: , |

“One morning in September 1893, a 30-year-old Indian man sat on a curb on Chicago’s Dearborn Street wearing an orange turban and a rumpled scarlet robe. He had come to the United States to speak at the Parliament of the World’s Religions, part of the famous World Columbian Exposition. The trouble was, he hadn’t actually been invited …” Read more about Swami Vivekananda’s time at the 1893 World’s Fair in Jennie Rothenberg Gritz's “The Indian Guru Who Brought Eastern [...]

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Did the Art Institute of Chicago lions come from the 1893 World’s Fair? (Pt 2)

By |2022-07-14T06:22:03-05:00July 14th, 2022|Categories: HISTORY|Tags: , , , , , , , |

The pair of lion sculptures by Edward Kemeys that stand in front of the Art Institute of Chicago (AIC) are not cast from sculptures at the 1893 World’s Fair. This misinformation, which appears to have originated in the late 1980s, now permeates descriptions of these iconic Chicago mascots in institutional, popular, and scholarly sources. A set of sixteen lion sculptures stood at the entrances to the Palace of Fine Arts at the World’s Columbian Exposition (WCE), and numerous contemporary sources credit their authorship to A. Phimister Proctor and Theodore Baur (not Kemeys). More importantly, the designs of Kemeys’ AIC lions clearly do not match any of the WCE lions.

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Did the Art Institute of Chicago lions come from the 1893 World’s Fair? (Pt 1)

By |2024-09-25T08:34:45-05:00July 14th, 2022|Categories: HISTORY|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , |

The pair of lion sculptures by Edward Kemeys that stand in front of the Art Institute of Chicago (AIC) are not cast from sculptures at the 1893 World’s Fair. This misinformation, which appears to have originated in the late 1980s, now permeates descriptions of these iconic Chicago mascots in institutional, popular, and scholarly sources. A set of sixteen lion sculptures stood at the entrances to the Palace of Fine Arts at the World’s Columbian Exposition (WCE), and numerous contemporary sources credit their authorship to A. Phimister Proctor and Theodore Baur (not Kemeys). More importantly, the designs of Kemeys’ AIC lions clearly do not match any of the WCE lions.

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Bancroft’s “Book of the Fair”

By |2022-01-15T08:20:32-06:00January 15th, 2022|Categories: NEWS|Tags: |

High school history teacher Michael Skomba writes in “Go West! Then Back to the Future” (Smithsonian Magazine blog January 14, 2022) about his exploration of one of the most popular and enduring historical narratives of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition. The Book of the Fair by Hubert Howe Bancroft, published in numerous editions, was “algorithmically perfected to maximize the market for an expensive work,” according to Bancroft scholar Dr. Travis Ross of Yale University. Skomba finds Bancroft’s history of the [...]

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Ontario’s Mammoth Squash at the 1893 World’s Fair

By |2021-04-02T11:21:04-05:00November 26th, 2020|Categories: HISTORY|Tags: |

So many things were big, big, BIG at the 1893 World’s Fair that it may have been easy to miss the world’s biggest squash. On display in the Horticultural Building in late September was a quarter-ton “monster squash” from Canada. Gourdzilla received some proud coverage back home in the September 29, 1893, issue of the Windsor Star, which reported on the sensational vegetable: “Ontario is again the sensation provider for the fair. No longer is the “Canadian Mite,” as [...]

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