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165. Picturesque World’s Fair – The Texas Building

By |2024-06-16T11:53:56-05:00June 16th, 2024|Categories: REPRINTS|Tags: , |

THE TEXAS BUILDING.—The Texas Building, a fine structure, was a credit to the patriotism and energy of the ladies of that state and equally a rebuke to the legislature of the great commonwealth which failed to make the needed appropriation in time. It was to the women alone that praise for Texas' representation at the Fair was due. The building occupied a fine site near the northern extremity of the grounds, not far from the Fifty-seventh Street entrance. The [...]

Nixon Waterman Dreams of the World’s Fair

By |2024-01-18T09:55:52-06:00January 19th, 2024|Categories: REPRINTS|Tags: , |

A prolific writer of prose and verse, Nixon Waterman (1859–1944) is credited with having conducted the first all-verse column in newspaper history, for the Chicago Herald. He lived and wrote in Chicago in the years before and during the 1893 World’s Fair. Waterman’s light-hearted and pun-riddled verse, often on topics of Christopher Columbus or the emerging Exposition fairgrounds in Jackson Park, filled spots throughout the run Jewell N. Halligan’s Illustrated World’s Fair, published from 1891 through 1893. “Without his [...]

Ron Soule’s “Escape from the Emerald City” imagines an origin story for Oz at the 1893 World’s Fair

By |2023-12-21T06:05:37-06:00December 21st, 2023|Categories: FICTION, PRODUCTS|Tags: , , , , , , , , , |

Escape from the Emerald City by Ron Soule. Independently published, 2023. 105 pages. Hardcover, $14.95. ISBN 9798395968029. Paperback, $7.95. ISBN 9798395968111. In the growing library of “fairground fiction,” stories that involve historical figures offer a special treat to readers who enjoy imagining how famous (and soon-to-be-famous) people experienced the 1893 World’s Fair. A then-unknown traveling salesman from Chicago visited the fairgrounds on several occasions with his wife and four sons. Only a few years later he would burst onto [...]

146. Picturesque World’s Fair – Birds-Eye View of State Buildings – Looking Northeast

By |2022-12-03T13:53:46-06:00December 3rd, 2022|Categories: REPRINTS|Tags: , , , , , , , |

BIRD'S-EYE VIEW OF STATE BUILDINGS—LOOKING NORTHEAST.—Very popular was the Fifty-seventh street entrance, at the northwest corner of the Exposition Grounds, situated as it was close to a railroad station and at the end of a street car cable system, and hundreds of thousands of people became, in consequence, familiar with the view given in the illustration. The scene is that presented looking to the northeast from a point near the entrance to the grounds, and is that of the [...]

The Plaster Lighting Catcher of the 1893 World’s Fair: Carl Rohl-Smith’s Benjamin Franklin statue (Part 1)

By |2022-09-04T09:06:10-05:00September 3rd, 2022|Categories: HISTORY|Tags: , , , , , , |

“The scientists says that electricity is life. Then Jackson Park is of a truth a living thing.” — H. D. Northrop, The World's Fair as Seen in One Hundred Days (1893) A crowd of fans sporting blue and red poured out of the new Franklin Field in Philadelphia on the first day of October in 1895, a warm and sunny start to the college football season. Elated with the Quaker’s 40–0 victory over the visiting team from Swarthmore College, [...]

State Buildings

By |2022-10-02T10:14:17-05:00April 13th, 2022|

The State Buildings The state buildings stood in a sweeping crescent across the northern end of the Columbian Exposition fairgrounds. Thirty-six states and one group of territories each sponsored a state building at the 1893 World's Fair. (The only states in 1893 that did not erect a building were Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, Nevada, North Carolina, Oregon, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Wyoming.) These architecturally diverse structures often were built of materials native to that state, and several were replicas of [...]

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Timeline

By |2022-10-26T11:05:21-05:00March 13th, 2022|

Timeline Events and Dates of the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago The Columbian Exposition (May 1-Oct. 30, 1893) May 1893 Tuesday, May 1 (Opening Day) Tuesday, May 8 (Catholic Knights of America Day) Wednesday, May 17 (Norway Day) Tuesday, May 23 Wednesday, May 24 (Maine Day) Thursday, May 25 Friday, May 26 Saturday, May 27 Sunday, May 28 Monday, May 29 Tuesday, May 30 (Decoration Day) June 1893 Monday, June 5 (Denmark Day) Thursday, [...]

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Progress of the Century: The Celebrated Agave Plant of the 1893 World’s Fair

By |2023-03-11T16:15:10-06:00May 7th, 2021|Categories: HISTORY|Tags: , , , |

Uncle John rose with the morning sun on April 23, 1893 and made a bee-line for the Horticultural Building on the fairgrounds of the World’s Columbian Exposition in Jackson Park, Chicago. The opening of the Fair—when President Cleveland would push the button to unfurl the flags along the White City rooftops and release the water to the glorious fountains—was still nine days away. Today, however, the Chief of the Horticultural Department was expecting a throng of visitors to his [...]

Libraries at the Columbian Exposition

By |2024-04-10T16:45:52-05:00April 7th, 2019|Categories: REPRINTS|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |

“Extremes meet at Chicago.” —librarian Caroline Harwood Garland. The 1893 World’s Fair was full of contrasts: exotic dancing on the Midway and educational exhibits; fountains illuminated by electricity and bibles illuminated by paintings, dynamos and the Dewey decimal system; balloon rides and books. Amidst the Cracker Jack and orange cider was also “food for reflection in the existence of so many libraries.” To celebrate National Library Week, let’s take a look at libraries at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition. [...]

July 1-Sept. 30, 2018: “John Singer Sargent and Chicago’s Gilded Age” at the Art Institute of Chicago

By |2022-03-05T10:36:39-06:00July 22nd, 2018|Categories: EVENTS (past)|Tags: , , |

A new exhibit running at the Art Institute of Chicago (AIC) has reunited a set of paintings by John Singer Sargent that were on display at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. John Singer Sargent and Chicago’s Gilded Age features approximately 100 objects from the AIC’s collection, private collections, and public institutions. Among them are four of the nine portrait paintings that Sargent exhibited inside the Palace of Fine Arts of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition: • Mother and [...]

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