RECENT POSTS ABOUT THE HISTORY OF THE COLUMBIAN EXPOSITION’S BUILDING, FAIRGROUNDS, EXHIBITS, EVENTS, AND PEOPLE.
“Ring the Bells!” by Richard Lew Dawson
Essayist, story writer, song writer, critic and poet, Richard Lew Dawson (1852–1921) wrote for many popular newspapers and magazines, including the Indianapolis Sentinel, Indianapolis Journal, Chicago Current, Saturday Herald, and Century Magazine. He was a founding member of the Western Association of Writers in 1886. A few years before his death on April 23, 1921, the Hoosier writer moved to San Francisco, where he departed this world on the anniversary of Shakespeare’s birthday. Dawson’s poem “Ring the Bells!,” celebrating Independence Day, ran in the Chicago Inter Ocean on July 4, 1893. Machinery Hall with American flag. [Digital image [...]
“Big Shoulders” comic series plans to visit the 1893 World’s Fair
“A crossroads is where destinies can get made or broken,” states Big Shoulders #1, the first of a proposed six-issue full-color comic series. This Chicago-based fantasy, where the mundane and the cosmic collide, features twenty-two-year-old Coda Walker waking up and finding himself transported to the 1893 World’s Fair. Two pages (not yet colored) from Big Shoulders #1, showing Coda Walker in front of the Administration Building at the 1893 World’s Fair. [Art: Scott Gray] Written by John Dudley, with art by Scott Gray and coloring by Faz Choudhury, Big Shoulders has launched a Kickstarter campaign to entice investors [...]
Famous World’s Fair Name on “Jeopardy!”
“Famous Names” served as the Final Jeopardy category on the June 12, 2024, episode of Jeopardy! The answer was: “Vying with Eiffel, this engineer wanted to create big; an admiring account said the Obelisk of Luxor is too short to be a spoke.” Two of the contestants came up with correct question of is “Who is Ferris?” Pittsburgh engineer George Washington Gale Ferris, Jr., designed his great iron wheel for the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago. The Ferris Wheel rose more than 250 feet above the center of the Midway Plaisance. The Ferris Wheel from the north, showing [...]
165. Picturesque World’s Fair – The Texas Building
THE TEXAS BUILDING.—The Texas Building, a fine structure, was a credit to the patriotism and energy of the ladies of that state and equally a rebuke to the legislature of the great commonwealth which failed to make the needed appropriation in time. It was to the women alone that praise for Texas' representation at the Fair was due. The building occupied a fine site near the northern extremity of the grounds, not far from the Fifty-seventh Street entrance. The architecture was somewhat in the Spanish style, the early history of Texas being borne in mind by the architect. The [...]
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, we will examine anthropology’s project of race-making during the late nineteenth century through the spectacle of the famous 1893 World's [...]
(Re)Introducing the Dana Palace of Fine Arts
Dear Mr. Burnham, Please take a look at the attached press release drafted by Chief Halsey Ives of the Fine Arts Department. Are we to proceed with this? I urge caution. With concern, Moses P. Handy Publicity and Promotion May 14, 1893 (Re)Introducing the Dana Palace of Fine Arts The World’s Fair is open, the guidebooks are printed, and the maps are distributed. And yet, winds of change are blowing through the Windy City. The Palace of Fine Arts is getting a name change! No, not to the “Art Palace” (please stop calling it that) or the “Art Institute” [...]
Aurora Borealis in Alba Urbs
Amid the majesty of night, What splendid vision strikes my eyes, In glory bursting on the sight, Forth from the northern skies? — from “The Aurora Borealis” by Stephen Greenleaf Bulfinch
164. Picturesque World’s Fair – The North Canal – Looking South
THE NORTH CANAL—LOOKING SOUTH —From a point near the west approach to the bridge connecting the Electricity and Manufactures Buildings a view was afforded southward down the South Canal, which had many interesting features. The always thronged bridge between the plaza in front of the Administration Building and the south front of the Manufactures cuts off, it is true, a portion of the view but adds in itself an interesting feature. The photograph from which the illustrations were made affords the usual afternoon scene at this point during the continuation of the Fair. On the right, the graceful columns [...]
Reaching the fairgrounds by cable car, cattle car, steamboat, or L?
Visitors to the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition had many options for transportation to (and within), the fairgrounds. The poem below, about various transportation modes, may have been a sly advertisement for the company mentioned in the final line. “The Crowd Entering the Grounds from the Elevated Railway,” drawn by T. de Thulstrup after a sketch by T. Dart Walker. [Image from Harper’s Weekly June 10, 1893.] Some reached The Fair by steamboat, .....Some ride upon the “L;” Some bump their bones on the cable car .....And wish the road in—well. Some make the jaunt in a cattle car .....And [...]
“The crush was terrible”: A firsthand account of Opening Day at the 1893 World’s Fair
A correspondent to the Russell Record in Russell County, Kansas, offered this account of Opening Day of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition. Despite having a rather unpleasant time adrift in the “Surging Sea of Humanity” assembled in Jackson Park for the ceremony, and despite the World’s Fair being far from complete in early May, this Kansan advised that “No one, who can conveniently see it, should fail to do so.” Thousands and thousands of people collected on the grounds and crowded before the Administration building last Monday to see the Fair formally opened by Pres. Cleveland. The crush was [...]