RECENT POSTS
from
World’sFairChicago1893.com
Oct. 10, 2020: “Innovations of the 1893 World’s Fair” online presentation (Chicago Detours)
Chicago Detours will be offering an online lecture on "Innovations of the 1893 World's Fair" on Saturday, October 10, at 1 pm (central time). The event, held via Zoom, will delve into the history of the World's Colombian Exposition of 1893 and share the inventions, engineering feats, and gastronomical exhibits that wowed visitors. Tickets can be purchased for $15 at https://chicagodetours.rezdy.com/406501/wonders-of-the-1893-world-s-fair
Sept 18, 2020 and after-1893 World’s Fair Walking Tours (Chicago Architecture Center)
Beginning September 18, 2020, the Chicago Architecture Center (CAC) is offering "1893 World's Fair" family walking tours. Although the World’s Columbian Exposition fairgrounds were located south of downtown Chicago and in mostly temporary buildings, there are sites downtown—still standing today—that date from the Fair and highlight its impact. For $99 per family, enjoy a safe walking tour experience lasting 45−60 minutes with one of the CAC’s expertly trained Education [...]
Sept. 24, 2020: “Designed to Dazzle and Delight” Olmsted and the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition (online)
On Thursday, September 24, 2020, The National Association for Olmsted Parks will host Chicago parks historian Julia Bachrach, who will offer a lecture "Designed to Dazzle and Delight" about landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted and the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition. The special program will be help at 7:30 p.m. Eastern Time using Zoom. Advance registration is required.
106. Picturesque World’s Fair – Dahomey Men
DAHOMEY MEN.—The Dahomey Village consisted of three houses and a group of huts, much of the material being brought from Dahomey for the purpose, and was occupied by sixty men and forty women. Other Pages from PICTURESQUE WORLD’S FAIR.
Tiffany Coffeepot from the World’s Columbian Exposition Sells for $68,750
An exquisite coffeepot made by Tiffany & Company and exhibited at the 1893 World’s Fair sold for $68,750 in July by Skinner auctions. The 10¼-inch-tall sterling silver and enamel piece, adorned with lapis lazuli and acid-etched arabesques, far exceeded its estimate of $15,000–25,000. Tiffany showcased eight “after-dinner” coffeepots in the company’s pavilion inside the Manufactures and Liberal Arts Building at the Columbian Exposition. A Tiffany & Co. sterling [...]
Eight Famous Parks Designed by Frederick Law Olmsted
"8 Famous Parks Designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, Plus a Tiny One You May Not Know About" by Wendy Bowman reviews many of the great works by landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, who died on this day in 1903. Included are the fairgrounds of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition and the adjacent (and often overlooked) Washington Park in Chicago. Olmsted & Vaux’s 1871 South Park Plan (from the Chicago [...]
105. Picturesque World’s Fair – Hindu Jugglers
HINDU JUGGLERS.—Some time before the close of the Fair there was erected a small building on the Midway Plaisance in which Hindu jugglers appeared, to display their skill for the first time before American audiences. Other Pages from PICTURESQUE WORLD’S FAIR.
Aug 27, 2020: “Wonders of the 1893 World’s Fair” online presentation (Chicago Detours)
Chicago Detours will be offering a virtual tour of the World's Columbian Exposition fairgrounds on Thurs, August 27, starting at 6 pm (central time). The 50-minute virtual tour led via Zoom shares the inventions, engineering feats, and gastronomical exhibits that wowed visitors to the 1893 World’s Fair. Tickets for the online event can be purchased for $15 at https://chicagodetours.rezdy.com/406501/wonders-of-the-1893-world-s-fair
In-cider Information on a Columbian Exposition Beverage
The Columbian Exposition adult beverage shelf has a new addition. Reach past those cans of “Fist City” and “All the World is Here” beer, Field Gin, and the long line of products from Few Spirits and grab a can of Virtue Cider’s new Southcider. Crafted in their cider houses in Fennville, Michigan, using local apples and blended with botanicals, Southcider--along with its companion beverage Northcider--honors Chicago’s famous crosstown baseball [...]
104. Picturesque World’s Fair – A South Sea Island House
A SOUTH SEA ISLAND HOUSE.—The South Sea Island Village included among its inhabitants natives of various islands in the Polynesian Archipelago, though so superior to all the rest were the Samoans that they soon attracted most attention, and the place was as often alluded to as the Samoan Village as otherwise. The houses were of Samoan construction, and the largest of them was a building of repute, having once [...]
103. Picturesque World’s Fair – Soloman Joseph and Ta-Ra-Ra Boom-De-Aye
SOLOMON JOSEPH AND TA-RA-RA BOOM-DE-AYE.—As a group of uncompromisingly rapacious and mannerless patronage-seekers the donkey boys of a Street in Cairo were probably never surpassed, and of these Solomon Joseph was admittedly the chief brigand. He was noisy, persistent and altogether intolerable in soliciting people to ride upon his dwarfish beasts, and was always grinning and good-natured. Of the two, the donkey shown in the picture had probably the [...]
Zoom to the 1893 World’s Fair with the Chicago History Museum
Stuck in endless online conferences? Ready to escape from the confines of your home office? Try adding a background that situates you at the 1893 World's Fair. The Chicago History Museum offers several images from their collection to use as a Zoom background. Among them is a famous photograph by C. D. Arnold of the Administration Building surrounded by crowds on Chicago Day [CHM, ICHi-002201] You can download the [...]
1893 Chicago Midway Playing Cards & History of the World’s Fair Card Deck
1893 Chicago Midway Playing Cards & History of the World’s Fair Card Deck by Stuart Van Leer Bradley. Railway Station Press, 2020. ISBN: 9781951299057. Softcover, 40 pages. $15.00. This companion book to the recently produced set of Midway Playing Cards contains a summary of the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago and the Midway Plaisance, technical notes about the set of Barnhart Brothers & Spindler (BB&S) type foundry printers ornaments, [...]
Aug. 11, 2020: “Britannia Visits the White City”: the Peter family and the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893 (Washington D.C.)
What was it like to attend the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago? A first-hand account from Martha Washington’s great-grandchild is the basis of “Britannia Visits the White City,” a lecture sponsored by the DAR Museum in Washington on August 11, 2020. Washington descendant Britannia W. Kennon, a seventy-eight-year-old owner of the Georgetown estate of Tudor Place, spent a week with her family at the Chicago World’s Fair in [...]
The Voyage of “The Viking” Ship to the 1893 World’s Fair
“The presence of the Viking ship in one of our ports and her subsequent visit to Newport and New York and the trip up the Hudson, through the Erie Canal down the Great Lakes to Chicago and the ‘White City’ marks a historical event of no small importance.” —The Chautauquan, August 1893. The Viking from Norway at the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago. [Image from Scientific American, Aug. [...]
The Columbian Exposition as a New World Fable
“A New World Fable” by Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen describes the 1893 World’s Fair as a “wealth of achievement” that promises to be “an elevating influence which will endure beyond the present generation.”
1776, 1861, and 1893
At a banquet held in Chicago on January 10, 1891, Chief of Construction Daniel Burnham made this patriotic appeal to the architects of the World’s Columbian Exposition: “Gentlemen, 1893 will be the third great date in our country’s history. On the two others, 1776 and 1861, all true Americans served, and so now I ask you to serve again!" [from Martin, Justin Genius of Place: The Life of Frederick Law [...]
Chicago00 Launches 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition VR Web Portal
Grab your Columbian Exposition return pass and head back to the 1893 World’s Fair virtually with the Chicago 00 Project, which has launched their 1893 World's Columbian Exposition VR web portal at https://1893.chicago00.org/. A partnership between the Chicago History Museum and filmmaker Geoffrey Alan Rhodes, the Chicago 00 Project has been producing a series of interactive multimedia experiences using historical images of important sites and events in Chicago. Their [...]
102. Picturesque World’s Fair – Medicine and Plenty Horse, Sioux Indian Chiefs
MEDICINE" AND " PLENTY HORSE," SIOUX INDIAN CHIEFS.- The typical Indian Village on the Plaisance was not so much of a novelty as a study for American visitors to the Fair. They had seen Indians enough, but they had never seen members of widely separate tribes grouped together and so affording opportunity for comparison. To foreigners all were interesting, as savage races from abroad were to us, but to [...]
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, [...]