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Bounced from the Beer Garden on the Midway Plaisance

Visitors to the 1893 World’s Fair frequently complained about the behavior of restaurant staff, with claims of their padding the bill of fare to not offering polite service. While venturing into cafes and bars among the various international villages of the Midway Plaisance, guests faced even greater tensions due to language barriers and differences in cultural norms. The Beer Garden in front of the Castle in the German Village, 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition. [Image from Unsere Weltausstellung. Eine [...]

By |2025-03-14T11:11:13-05:00March 14th, 2025|Categories: REPRINTS|Tags: , |0 Comments
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Homesick in the German Village

The World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893 showcased many exciting attractions that were new and unusual to the tens of millions of visitors—electrical devices powered by mammoth dynamos, unfamiliar music and dance from Asian and African cultures, and a giant rotating observation tower. In some instances, though, fairgoers found comfort in the familiar, as in the case of when this immigrant ventured into German Village on the Midway Plaisance and reconnected to fond memories of the Fatherland. Entrance to [...]

By |2025-03-12T16:03:03-05:00March 13th, 2025|Categories: REPRINTS|Tags: |0 Comments
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World’s Fair bridge listed among “Chicago’s Most Endangered Buildings 2025”

Preservation Chicago released its “Most Endangered” list for 2025 (on March 4, Chicago's 188th birthday). Included with six threatened buildings is a bridge that allowed tens of millions of visitors to cross the Lagoon during the 1893 World’s Fair. Designed by renowned architectural firm of Burnham & Root, the bridge was built in 1880 and is the oldest extant structure of Frederick Law Olmsted’s original design for Jackson Park. Officially renamed the Clarence Darrow Memorial Bridge in 1957, the [...]

By |2025-03-06T11:57:31-06:00March 7th, 2025|Categories: NEWS|Tags: |0 Comments
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Mar. 24, 2025: “Fashion, Ferris Wheels, and Film: Dressing Women for the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair” (Crest Hill, IL)

The White Oak Library District Crest Hill Branch is hosting a talk on “Fashion, Ferris Wheels, and Film: Dressing Women for the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair” on March 24, 2025, at 7 pm. Kelli Marshall of Chicago Movie Tours will discuss how women navigated societal expectations while dressing for a day of excitement at one of America’s first amusement parks. Through the use of original photographs, vintage newspaper articles, and a virtual reality Ferris Wheel experience, she will explore [...]

By |2025-03-02T10:17:00-06:00March 3rd, 2025|Categories: EVENTS|2 Comments
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Nothing to be ashamed of on the Midway Plaisance

“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 [...]

By |2025-02-22T06:42:18-06:00February 22nd, 2025|Categories: REPRINTS|Tags: |0 Comments
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Chicago Mayor Proposes that the U.S. Should Annex Canada

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 [...]

By |2025-02-20T09:43:30-06:00February 21st, 2025|Categories: REPRINTS|Tags: , , |1 Comment
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United States Presidents Who Visited the 1893 World’s Fair

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 [...]

By |2025-02-17T12:00:38-06:00February 17th, 2025|Categories: HISTORY|Tags: , , , , |0 Comments
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“Below were the nations of the earth”: Riding the Ferris Wheel

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 [...]

By |2025-02-13T11:14:02-06:00February 14th, 2025|Categories: REPRINTS|Tags: |0 Comments
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Are the lights back on at “Devil in the White City”?

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 [...]

By |2025-01-26T11:39:06-06:00January 26th, 2025|Categories: NEWS, REPRINTS, VIDEO|Tags: |0 Comments
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Jan. 25, 2025: “At Home at the Fair: Chicago Artists at the World’s Columbian Exposition” (Chicago)

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 [...]

By |2025-03-18T12:08:06-05:00January 15th, 2025|Categories: EVENTS (past)|0 Comments
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