“Then or now, no words can express the beauty of the Dream City, for it is beyond even the unearthly glamour of a dream.” — Candace Wheeler “The White City” is the most common moniker given to the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. This nickname—referring to the uniform alabaster color of most of the main exhibition palaces—was coined by H. C. Bunner in his essay “The Making of the White City” (Scribner’s October 1892). A view of a [...]
Avert your eyes from a post-apocalyptic future in which fearsome fungi destroy civilization and instead look back at some marvelous mushrooms at the 1893 World’s Fair. George Hiller with his mushroom bed in the dome gallery of the Horticultural Building at the 1893 World’s Fair. [Image from the Chicago Tribune Jan. 22, 1893.] The January 22, 1893, issue of the Chicago Tribune reported on “Mushrooms at the Exposition” having “a bed in the Horticultural Building well worth seeing”: [...]
The Palatine Library hosts a talk on "The 1893 Chicago World's Fair" on Wednesday, March 22, 2023, from 6:30-7:30 pm in the Main Library building (700 N. North Court, Palatine, IL). Historian Jim Gibbons will detail the events of the World’s Columbian Exposition, while incorporating the story of a darker story of America’s first well-known serial killer, the infamous H.H. Holmes. Register to attend the free event here.
In various stages of development for twenty years, the screen adaptation of 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 blown another fuse. In the wake of leading man Keanu Reeves and director Todd Field dropping out of the drama last October, Hulu has pulled the plug on the production on March 6. Hulu ordered the miniseries in February 2019, but [...]
“Oh, great White City I've got the adequate committee Where have your walls gone? I think about it now.” —Sufjan Stevens Come on Feel the Fair! A stage musical adaptation of Sufjan Stevens’ acclaimed 2005 concept album Illinois, which features a song about the 1893 World’s Fair, will open this summer. The lyrics in Illinois reference iconic persons, places, and events related to the Prairie State. In addition to tracks about UFOs, zombies, and predatory wasps is the triumphant [...]
The Newberry Library's Adult Education program will offer an online writing seminar on Erik Larson's The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America. This acclaimed 2003 historical non-fiction book introduced millions of readers to the facinating and tumultuous history of how the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition was built. "Deconstructing The Devil in the White City" will analyze the craft of the storytelling in Larson's writing. Dr. Caroline Malloy—a historian, book coach, and [...]
[Continued from Part 1] A great stage decked with ambitious scenery Perhaps the first thing that would strike a stranger entering the World’s Fair grounds in the summer of 1892 would be the silence of the place, the next the almost theatrical unreality of the impression by the sight of an assemblage of buildings so startlingly out of the common in size and form. When I speak of the silence, I mean the effect of silence. There are seven [...]
Few essays about the fairgrounds for the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition better capture the creative energy of its construction than H. C. Bunner’s “The Making of the White City.” The American novelist, journalist, and poet Henry Cuyler Bunner (1855–1896) visited Jackson Park in Chicago during the summer of 1892. There he witnessed laborers assembling the great exhibit halls, hundreds of smaller structures, and magnificent landscaping in advance of the October 1892 Dedication Day ceremony. While Bunner employs an ornate [...]
One of the largest surviving display artifacts of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition sits in a park in Geneva, Illinois. The Viking ship, a replica of the ancient Viking ship Gokstad, was built in Norway in 1892 and sailed to Chicago in 1893, surviving a long and dangerous non-stop crossing of the Atlantic Ocean. Since 1995, the ship has stood in Good Templar Park in Geneva, Illinois, and now is managed and preserved by the Friends of The Viking [...]
"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 [...]
