“There is nothing quite so free on earth as living in a large city,” claimed a Wisconsin man visiting Chicago in 1893. A reporter from Philadelphia told of the man’s adventure as he journeyed from downtown to the Midway Plaisance of the World’s Fair and into one of its (at the time) notorious theaters. [Image from Puck magazine, July 31, 1893.] Last night a man who had been attending the Exposition left for his Wisconsin home with [...]
Saturday, August 19, 1893, was “British Empire Day” at the World’s Fair, and Chicago Mayor Carter Harrison offered some provocative words for the celebration. According to a visitor from Kansas, the mayor declared: “The World’s Exposition now in session is the greatest Fair the world has ever known. The United Sates is the greatest government of the Earth, and we propose to extend our boundaries by annexing Canada to Uncle Sam and Great Britain to Chicago.” The Chicago Tribune [...]
Greeting ex-President Benjamin Harrison when he visited the Indiana State Building at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago [Image from the Chicago Inter Ocean September 28, 1893.] Thirteen men who served as President of the United States lived at the time of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition. Five of them are known to have visited Chicago to see the Fair. Rutherford B. Hayes (1822–1893) 19th U.S. President (Republican) from March 4, 1877 – March 4, 1881. Rutherford [...]
James O’Shaughnessy, Jr. regularly reported on the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago for the St. Joseph Herald. In a letter dated June 24, he describes riding on the great Ferris Wheel, which had opened on the Midway Plaisance only three days earlier. Bumping into people from his Missouri hometown while on the Columbian Exposition fairgrounds would have been surprise enough, but doing so in the confines he describes is quite a coincidence! At the end of his letter, O’Shaughnessy [...]
A screen version of The Devil in the White City has flickered back to life. Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio’s project to adapt Erik Larson’s 2003 best-selling book about the Columbian Exposition, The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America, has been on-again, off-again for fifteen years. Hulu pulled the plug on a proposed miniseries in March of 2023, and all has been dark since then. (A history of the screen [...]
The Vanderpoel Art Association will host a presentation “At Home at the Fair: Chicago Artists at the World’s Columbian Exposition” on Saturday, January 25, 2025 at 1 p.m. Independent art historian Wendy Greenhouse will discuss what Chicago’s fine artists brought to the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition. Although little noticed at the time and in posterity, Chicagoans contributed to the decoration of the exposition’s buildings and grounds and submitted significant paintings and sculptures to the vast but exclusive art exhibition [...]
The death of architect John W. Root on January 15, 1891, delt a devastating blow to the Columbian Exposition—for which Root served as consulting architect—and even more so to his partner and close friend, Daniel H. Burnham. In the shock and grief from the sudden loss, Burnham offered these generous words on the life and legacy of John Root. It is hard to speak of him, for he had no salient greatness being great in all things. He was [...]
World’s Fair Auction #46 is now open, and online bidding closes at 10:00 PM EST on Tuesday, January 14, 2025. The auction catalog can be viewed at: http://www.worldsfairauction.com/cgi-bin/catalog.cgi. Lots 6 through 36 are items related to the 1893 World’s Fair, and include: an invitation to the Dedication Day ceremonies; a china plate made in Germany depicting the Agricultural Building; a Marshall Field & Company silk showing the Court of Honor; a large selection of medals, coins, badges, and spoons; [...]
On January 2, 1893, the United States Postal Service released the first “commemorative” stamps in its history. Postmaster General John Wanamaker contracted the American Bank Note Company to produce the set of sixteen “Columbian” stamps, having denominations ranging from 1 cent to $5 and a total face value of $16.34. The souvenir set depicts various scenes of Christopher Columbus’ 1492 voyage and tied into the upcoming World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. To properly illustrate the subjects, the stamp design [...]
The pair of lions sculptures by Edward Kemeys that guard the entrance to the Art Institute of Chicago are among the most recognized icons of the city. Their confusing origin story, often incorrectly connected to the 1893 World’s Fair, is described in Part 1 and Part 2 of “Did the Art Institute of Chicago lions come from the 1893 World’s Fair?” A profile of Edward Kemeys, written when his lion sculptures were about to be cast in bronze and [...]
