Horace Spencer Fiske’s odes to Daniel Chester French’s Columbian Exposition sculptures

The great sculptural works of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition have been memorialized in photographs, paintings, and prose. Poetry, too, honors some of the famous sculptures from the Fair. Horace Spencer Fiske (1859–1940) taught English at Beloit College and Wisconsin State Normal School before a long career on the faculty and administration of the University of Chicago beginning in 1894. He stablished the John Billings Fiske Prize in Poetry (in honor of his father) for University students in 1919 [...]

By |2024-07-11T06:07:08-05:00July 11th, 2024|Categories: REPRINTS, Uncategorized|Tags: , , , , , |0 Comments
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Jul. 9, 2014: “Race-making in the Americas From Columbus to the 1893 World’s Fair” (Chicago)

The Adult Education program at the Newberry Library will offer a course on "Race-making in the Americas: From Columbus to the 1893 World’s Fair" weekly on Tuesdays from July 9–30, 2024. Led by Breanna Escamilla, an anthropologist from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the seminar will begin by analyzing the journal of Christopher Columbus and expand into the archival materials of religious missionaries in the Western Hemisphere, before turning toward the racial project of chattel-slavery in the Americas. Finally, [...]

By |2024-09-22T11:08:10-05:00June 4th, 2024|Categories: EVENTS (past), Uncategorized|Tags: , |0 Comments
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Dec. 2, 2022 – Feb. 1, 2023: A Columbian Exposition quilt on display (Woodland, CA)

“Expressions in Cloth,” a new exhibition at YoloArts’ Gallery 625 in Woodland, California, includes a beautiful quilt by artist Sherry Werum that features images inspired by the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. World's Fair enthusiasts might see Louis Sullivan's iconic Golden Door entrance to the Transporation Building or William Le Baron Jenney's stunning glass dome of the Horticultural Building among Werum's intricate design. “Expressions in Cloth” runs from December 2, 2022, to February 1, 2023, at Gallery 625 [...]

By |2022-12-04T09:04:02-06:00December 4th, 2022|Categories: EXHIBITS (current), NEWS, Uncategorized|Tags: , |0 Comments
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“Crazy Enthusiasm” for Ignacy Paderewski at the 1893 World’s Fair

Among the constellation of famous (or soon-to-be-famous) visitors to the 1893 World’s Fair, few stars shined as bright as pianist Ignacy Jan Paderewski (1860–1941). Wherever he performed, concert halls filled with passionate and adoring fans. The musical celebrity with wild and alluring red hair cast a spell over the women in the audience. One pundit, in the days before Paderewski’s concert at the opening of the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, diagnosed their craze as “Paddymania.” The Musical Courier [...]

By |2022-12-10T09:57:36-06:00September 25th, 2022|Categories: REPRINTS, Uncategorized|Tags: , , , |0 Comments
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138. Picturesque World’s Fair – The Guatemala Building

THE GUATEMALA BUILDING.—Built in the Spanish style and tastefully though not profusely decorated, the Guatemala Building presented a most attractive frontage from its site at the east end of the North Pond. The edifice was one hundred and eleven feet square, and two stories in height, and the corners were embellished by graceful towers twenty-three feet in diameter. The entire height of the towers was sixty-five feet, and in two of them were staircases giving access to the roof [...]

By |2022-05-07T05:32:48-05:00May 7th, 2022|Categories: REPRINTS, Uncategorized|Tags: , |0 Comments
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Footprint of the Obama Presidential Center in Jackson Park

Following a lengthy federal regulatory review, the Obama Presidential Center (OPC) is now preparing for its official groundbreaking in the fall of 2020, and the City of Chicago is beginning pre-construction work in Jackson Park. Updates on the OPC construction can be found at https://www.obama.org/updates/. The OPC campus has several components, all localized in the southwest corner of what was the fairgrounds for the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition. That space today has a track and football field, playground, bathroom [...]

By |2021-04-30T07:49:19-05:00April 29th, 2021|Categories: NEWS, Uncategorized|Tags: |1 Comment
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101. Picturesque World’s Fair – Nizaha, A Woman of Nazareth

NIZAHA, A WOMAN OF NAZARETH.— Hardly what one would expect in appearance was Nizaha, a woman with the Bedouins, who came from the locality reverentially considered by all the Christian world as the birthplace of Christ. It will be observed that in sitting for her photograph Nizaha did not forget her hands and handkerchief and that, with the left hand especially, as it is spread out against her side, a somewhat startling effect is produced. The rings are shown [...]

By |2020-06-28T10:56:09-05:00June 28th, 2020|Categories: REPRINTS, Uncategorized|Tags: , |0 Comments
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When Buffalo Bill Cody Goosed the World’s Fair

In the fall of 1893, Buffalo Bill Cody “departed Chicago with a million in cash and the irony of the last laugh,” writes Matt Braun in his article “Buffalo Bill Goosed the World’s Fair” in the May 2014 issue of True West magazine. “He never paid a red cent to Burnham or the World’s Columbian Exposition,” The article offers an account of how Nate Salsbury, Cody’s partner and business manager, requested a concession from the Columbian Exposition's Committee of [...]

By |2023-02-19T10:34:02-06:00May 15th, 2020|Categories: NEWS, Uncategorized|Tags: , |0 Comments
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Opening Day at the 1893 World’s Fair

“The Electric Button” [Image (colorized) from Frank Leslie’s Illustrated, May 18, 1893.] Opening Day at the World's Columbian Exposition, May 1, 1893, brought “the greatest crowd Chicago has ever seen or probably ever will witness” into Jackson Park. The tally of total visitors inside the fairground, was close to 400,000, with 242,000 people buying tickets at the gate and another 150,000 arriving with pre-purchased souvenir tickets. The event may have been the greatest crowd Chicago had ever seen, [...]

By |2020-05-01T16:14:13-05:00May 1st, 2020|Categories: HISTORY, Uncategorized|Tags: |0 Comments
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Clara Doty Bates, Hostess of the 1893 World’s Fair Children’s Library

“There are some crusty old bachelors and a few childless women who make a pretense of disliking children, but it's a flimsy sort of sour-grape antipathy, and rarely rings true. Even those people who do not like children's society will find a great deal to enjoy in their domicile.” —Emma. B. Dunlap, writing about the Children’s Building at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition. Clara Doty Bates. [Image from A Woman of the Century edited by Frances E. Willard [...]

By |2023-12-08T08:50:27-06:00March 21st, 2019|Categories: HISTORY, Uncategorized|Tags: , , , |0 Comments
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