The Museum of Wisconsin Art (MOWA) in West Bend, Wisconsin, is hosting a talk on "The Vanishing City: Excavating the World’s Fair of 1893" on Saturday, February 8, 2020, from 2-3:30 pm. Rebecca Graff, associate professor of anthropology at Lake Forest College (IL), divulges what is hiding beneath the surface of Jackson Park. Professor Graff will discuss her archaeological and archival research focused on the Fair’s ephemeral “White City” and Midway Plaisance. The results of the excavation in Jackson [...]

For a short time in 1893, the Hyde Park and Kenwood neighborhoods of Chicago bordered the capital of the world, as millions visited the World’s Columbian Exposition in Jackson Park and the Midway Plaisance. The City in a Garden, a new book by John Mark Hansen explores the history of these neighborhoods: Chicago suburb, world’s fair grounds, college town, the city’s first stably integrated community, Hyde Park and Kenwood have many distinctions. The City in a Garden tells the [...]

The January 10 luncheon of the Caxton Club of Chicago features James Hagy, co-author with Sage Hagy of Fair Tricks: The Magicians at the Columbian Exposition, Chicago 1893. Recent scholarship has confirmed the long-assumed basic presence of a young Howard Thurston and an even younger Harry Houdini, both then unknown but who would soon become the two most recognized magicians of the vaudeville era. But how extensive were conjurors’ contributions to the “Magic of the White City”? Fair Tricks pulls [...]

Glessner House is hosting a talk on "The Vanishing City: Excavating the World’s Fair of 1893" on Sunday, October 13, 2019, from 4-5 pm. Rebecca Graff, assistant professor of anthropology and chair of the American studies at Lake Forest College, divulges what is hiding beneath the future Obama Presidential Center site in Chicago. Professor Graff will discuss her archaeological and archival research focused on the Fair’s ephemeral “White City” and Midway Plaisance. The results of the excavation in Jackson [...]

The Glessner House is sponsoring "Walking the White City," a walking tour of Jackson Park on Sunday, September 8, 2019, from 10 am to noon. Led by architect and historian John Waters, the tour will locate the sites of landmarks of the fair, explore the fascinating vestiges of the fair that still remain, and show how the fair influenced the design of Jackson Park as we know it today. The tour costs $25 per person ($20 for Glessner House [...]

The quarterly meeting of the Batavia Historical Society (Batavia, IL) on Sunday, June 23 will feature a presentation by Karl Bruhn on the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Karl Bruhn of Batavia is a retired history teacher and volunteer for the Chicago Architecture Center. The meeting is free and open to the public and will be held at Batavia City Hall Council Chamber (100 N. Island Ave, Batavia IL 60510) starting at 2 pm. Some information provided by [...]