RECENT POSTS ABOUT THE HISTORY OF THE COLUMBIAN EXPOSITION’S BUILDING, FAIRGROUNDS, EXHIBITS, EVENTS, AND PEOPLE.
2023 Columbian Exposition Gift Guide
If you are shopping for a gift to give a Columbian Exposition enthusiast or just want to treat yourself to a little something during the holiday season, check on these products relating to the 1893 World’s Fair. Note: We provide this announcement of new products without any compensation from vendors. Prices and availability subject to change. We already reported on a fun new World’s Fair board game, Chicago 1893: The City Beautiful, from Transit Tees ($40). Atlas Stationers has offered the “Retro 51 World’s Columbian Exposition Rollerball Pen” for several years, though recently appear to have lowered the price [...]
“After the Ball” entertains and enrages at the 1893 World’s Fair
One song served as the (unofficial) anthem of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition. More popular than “Ta-ra-ra Boom-de-ay,” more often sung than “America,” and more frequently parodied than “Daddy Wouldn’t Buy Me a Bow Wow,” this tune could be heard—for better or for worse—throughout the fairgrounds all summer. Groups ranging from John Philip Sousa’s band to the marimba quartet at the Guatemala Building to the donkey boys on the Street in Cairo performed the hit of Fair, “After the Ball.” The cover of sheet music for Charles K. Harris’s incredibly popular “After the Ball,” the unofficial theme song [...]
Build your own World’s Fair host city with “Chicago 1893: The City Beautiful” tile game
The Great Chicago Fire of October 1871 has burned a four-mile-long scar across the heart of the city. It’s time to rebuild the city as Chicago plans to host the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition. Reach your hands into the bag and select your next tile to create your unique vision of Chicago … before your opponents upset those plans. Chicago 1893: The City Beautiful is a new tile game from Transit Tees in Chicago. Players use a set of ninety-one heavy chipboard tiles to sequentially build a map of the city, with Features that include railroads, boulevards, parks, monuments, and [...]
Andrew Carnegie’s Eulogy for the 1893 World’s Fair
Rags-to-riches immigrant, Gilded Age capitalist, and steel magnate Andrew Carnegie (1835–1919) built bridges and skyscrapers that still stand today. His amassed wealth and radical philanthropy built institutions that should stand even longer—museums and a college for Pittsburgh, a music hall for New York, and thousands of libraries around the world. Carnegie was well on his way in 1892 to becoming the richest man in the world when union-busting efforts and a violent strike at the Carnegie Steel plant in Homestead, Pennsylvania, would tarnish his reputation as a champion of the working man. That his visit to the 1893 World’s [...]
The White City Wish Book: Toys and Holiday Gifts from the 1893 World’s Fair
What holiday gift would you have wished for? In the years following the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, children could have received any number of fair-themed toys and games. Shown below are some examples advertised in the Montgomery Ward Catalogue & Buyer's Guide for 1895, the Carl P. Stirn Catalog of 1893, and various newspapers of the era. Which items would you have circled in the White City Wishbook? Views of the Fair Toys Administration Building Banks Ferris Wheel toys and puzzles The "Columbus Egg" Puzzle Jackson Park toy streetcar Other Columbiana
A Columbian Exposition Enthusiast’s Guide to HBO’s “The Gilded Age”
Viewers of The Gilded Age on HBO Max meet several real historical figures mingling with a cast of colorful fictional characters. Although the series takes place in 1882–83, ten years before the Columbian Exposition will open in Chicago, The Gilded Age features several of the designers, participants, and visitors associated with the 1893 World’s Fair. [This post will be updated as new episodes are released.] Jane Addams Social activist Jane Addams is mentioned in Season 2, Episode 4, when Miss Brook is invited to teach a charity class. Addams and Ellen Gates Starr co-founded a settlement house called Hull [...]
Sweet Treats Born at the 1893 World’s Fair
WTTW’s Chicago Stories series has a new episode titled “Candy Capital” that includes a segment about the sweet treats born at the 1893 World’s Fair. The profile discusses Milton Hershey, Frederick and Louis Rueckheim's precursor to Cracker Jack, Bertha Palmer's brownies, and more. The reversed shot of the Court of Honor (shown above) was a little strange, though. If you have recovered from your Halloween candy pile, check out their short stories and images from the Columbian Exposition at https://interactive.wttw.com/chicago-stories/candy-capital/sweet-treats-born-at-the-1893-chicago-world-fair Not full yet? Check out our stories about “Maillard’s Mammoth Chocolate Statues” and “The World’s Fair in a Cup [...]
Dec. 2-27, 2023: Joffrey Ballet’s “Columbian Nutcracker” (Chicago)
A festive Ferris Wheel, a Dream City, a flurry of snow, dancing dragons, dancing nuts, and dancing rats! It's that time of the year for Chicago’s Joffrey Ballet to stage their spectacular annual production of The Nutcracker, with story set on the fairgrounds of 1893 World's Columbian Exposition. Performances run from December 2-7, 2023, at the Lyric Opera House (20 N. Wacker Dr. in Chicago) This ballet by choreographer Christopher Wheeldon, which premiered in 2016, invites the audience to … “journey inside Chicago’s 1893 World’s Fair ... when young Marie and her mother, a sculptress who is creating the [...]
The Marvel-ous Midway of “Loki” Season 2, Episode 3 “1893”
On a branched timeline in the Marvel® multiverse, a few time travelers, a Norse trickster god, and an artificial intelligence disguised as an orange clock (and thought to be a ghost) visit the Midway Plaisance of the 1893 World’s Fair. Loki Season 2, Episode 3 “1893,” which premiered on Oct. 19, 2023, treated viewers to one of the most beautiful and faithful depictions of the World’s Columbian Exposition fairgrounds yet made for film or television. This wide-angle view of the 1893 World's Fair created for Marvel's Loki S2E3 depicts the tower of Chinese Village and Theater on the [...]
The Great Aussie Apple Race to the 1893 World’s Fair
In the spring of 1893, two apple barrels in New South Wales, Australia, embarked on separate paths in a race around the globe. Heading in opposite directions, they reunited inside the Horticultural Building at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Which apples won, red or gold? How many days did it take? How did they stay fresh for so long? Find out about their journey in the story below, from the June 7, 1893, issue of the Chicago Record. Part of the New South Wales exhibit in Horticultural Hall [Image from Kilburn stereoscope card 7951.] The [...]