300 Minutes at the World’s Columbian Exposition

Tim Donnohue of Knoxville, Tennessee, really wanted to see the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago, but he was very short on time. Mr. Donnohue reportedly left town at noon on Saturday, October 21, and travelled to Chicago. He spent five hours taking in as much as possible of the city and the Columbian Exposition fairgrounds—including three rides on the Ferris Wheel. Those rides alone occupied sixty minutes of his visit. Then he turned around and was back home in [...]

By Scott|2025-06-16T11:05:38-05:00June 19th, 2025|Categories: REPRINTS|Tags: |0 Comments
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179 Days at the World’s Columbian Exposition

“I have made up my mind that six months is too short a time for a man to see and study the Fair,” announced Mr. Thomas Carhart in May of 1893. The wealthy Englishman had come to Chicago to squeeze every possible moment out of the great Columbian Exposition. He planned to visit the fairgrounds in Jackson Park every day for the six months the Fair was open! Mr. Carhart, a resident of Madras, India, for the past thirty-five [...]

By Scott|2025-06-16T11:05:26-05:00June 18th, 2025|Categories: REPRINTS|Tags: , , , |0 Comments
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175. Picturesque World’s Fair – Canoes on Transportation Day

CANOES ON TRANSPORTATION DAY—Transportation Day was a great day all over the Fair grounds, not merely when the aristocratic blooded horses, with modern turn-outs, jostled lumbering camels and reindeer, and when an ox hitched to a rude cart might have nearly run over a palanquin, but upon the ponds and bayous and the canals, where the odd craft of different races swept along together in fantastic contrast. The scene in the illustration is evidently one afforded when there was [...]

By Randy|2025-06-16T11:11:56-05:00June 17th, 2025|Categories: REPRINTS|Tags: , , , , , |0 Comments
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174. Picturesque World’s Fair – Interior of the Woman’s Building

INTERIOR OF THE WOMAN'S BUILDING. The interior of the Woman's Building, viewed from the gallery at either end, presented an exceedingly attractive appearance. The great space was admirably lighted from the skylight over the central court, and the objects on display were visible with exceptional distinctness. Very curious and interesting were many these objects, character of which may be at least vaguely discerned in the illustration. A feature of the exhibits in this building was that many of them [...]

By Randy|2025-08-03T11:45:39-05:00May 3rd, 2025|Categories: REPRINTS|Tags: , , |0 Comments
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173. Picturesque World’s Fair – The Idaho Building

THE IDAHO BUILDING.—So attractive and so striking in appearance was the building erected in the Exposition grounds by the Territory of Idaho that before the Fair closed it was sold to an English club to be transported across the ocean and re-erected as a shooting box. The structure reminded one of a Swiss chalet, but was intended in its style and composition to indicate the varied resources of the young territory. All the material was from Idaho, and so [...]

By Randy|2025-06-03T17:00:37-05:00April 8th, 2025|Categories: REPRINTS|Tags: , , |2 Comments
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The biggest building in the world was at the 1893 Columbian Exposition

How big was the Manufactures and Liberal Arts Building at the 1893 World’s Fair? The MLAB was the largest building in the world and the largest roofed building that had ever erected at that time. The south front of the Manufactures Building at the 1893 World’s Fair. At 787 feet wide, this is the shorter end of the mammoth structure. [Image from Picturesque World’s Fair (W.B. Conkey, 1894); digitally edited and © worldsfairchicago1893.com.] At 1687 feet long by [...]

By Scott|2025-03-27T11:06:11-05:00March 28th, 2025|Categories: REPRINTS|Tags: |2 Comments
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“Isn’t it hideous?” Cleveland Caricature is a Columbian Claptrap

A flower arrangement made of immortelles (everlastings) at the 1893 World’s Fair intended to depict President Grover Cleveland. The floral display in the Horticultural Building turned heads and turned stomachs. This article in the Chicago Tribune about the “Caricature in Immortelles” included a headline declaring “The Alleged Cleveland Picture in the Horticultural Building an Atrocity.” Under the great dome of the horticultural building, just opposite the main entrance, through which most strangers approached the beautiful display of plants and [...]

By Scott|2025-03-11T11:59:25-05:00March 18th, 2025|Categories: REPRINTS|Tags: , , |0 Comments
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Dyche’s Panorama of North American Mammals at the 1893 World’s Fair

While countless attractions at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition could make a reasonable claim to be the “most interesting” exhibit on the fairgrounds, the article reprinted below awards that honor to the “Exhibit of Large North American Mammals” in the Kansas State Building. Professor Lewis Lindsay Dyche’s unique panorama is one of the few large displays from the 1893 Exposition that remained intact after the close of the Fair. The University of Kansas Natural History Museum houses the display, [...]

By Scott|2025-03-14T08:01:43-05:00March 16th, 2025|Categories: REPRINTS|Tags: , |0 Comments
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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 Scott|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 Scott|2025-03-12T16:03:03-05:00March 13th, 2025|Categories: REPRINTS|Tags: |0 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 Scott|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 Scott|2025-02-20T09:43:30-06:00February 21st, 2025|Categories: REPRINTS|Tags: , , |1 Comment
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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 Scott|2025-02-13T11:14:02-06:00February 14th, 2025|Categories: REPRINTS|Tags: |0 Comments
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172. Picturesque World’s Fair – Camels and Drivers in Cairo Street

CAMELS AND DRIVERS IN CAIRO STREET.--There was no end to the variations of scenes presented by the camels and drivers in Cairo Street so often described, but in the actual life of the village never really monotonous. A very patient lot were the camels, else, under the abuse they received, both manual and verbal, they would have often turned upon their masters and beaten them down with their ungainly hoofs. It seemed to be, in his opinion, the duty [...]

By Randy|2025-02-09T16:21:35-06:00February 9th, 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 Scott|2025-01-26T11:39:06-06:00January 26th, 2025|Categories: NEWS, REPRINTS, VIDEO|Tags: |0 Comments
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171. Picturesque World’s Fair – The Turkish Village

THE TURKISH VILLAGE.—Before the Columbian Exposition closed, the Turkish Village had become one of the prominent features of the Midway Plaisance, and drew a host of visitors. Its chief attractions were the theater and the bazaar, though the mosque, camps and cottages, the Persian tent, Cleopatra's needle and the serpentine column were among the curious things to see. Upon the stage of the theater the scenes presented were purely oriental, giving, it was claimed, a just idea of the [...]

By Randy|2025-01-19T14:34:59-06:00January 20th, 2025|Categories: REPRINTS, Uncategorized|Tags: , , , , |0 Comments
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“He was a prince of men” Daniel H. Burnham Remembers John W. Root

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 [...]

By Scott|2025-01-02T15:13:37-06:00January 15th, 2025|Categories: REPRINTS|Tags: , , |2 Comments
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1893 USPS Columbian Stamps Take a Licking

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 [...]

By Scott|2025-01-14T17:11:11-06:00January 2nd, 2025|Categories: REPRINTS|Tags: , , |0 Comments
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Edward Kemeys and his Work on the Lions for the Art Institute

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 [...]

By Scott|2024-12-30T18:04:24-06:00December 31st, 2024|Categories: REPRINTS|Tags: , |0 Comments
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170. Picturesque World’s Fair – The Promenade and Beach

THE PROMENADE AND BEACH.—Without the famous Promenade along the shore of Lake Michigan, the Columbian Exposition would have lacked one of its attractive features. The great body of blue water, over which came cooling breezes in the hottest days of midsummer, rested the eye after the visitor had become sated, if that were possible, with the glories of the Fair, and the Promenade and Beach afforded a pleasant walking or lounging place, as the case might be. The shadows [...]

By admin|2024-12-24T16:35:39-06:00December 24th, 2024|Categories: REPRINTS|Tags: , , , , , |0 Comments
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