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Feb. 27, 2024: “Fantastical Dreamscapes: Architectural Wonders and Innovations at World Expos, 1851 to 1911” (Online)
The Farm House Museum at Iowa State University in Ames is hosting an online talk on the architectural designs and building innovations that shaped the first sixty years of international expositions, including the 1893 World's Fair. University of Arizona Professor of Architectural History Lisa D. Schrenk will present "Fantastical Dreamscapes: Architectural Wonders and Innovations at World Expos, 1851 to 1911" on February 27, 2024, from 5- 6 PM (US [...]
Feb.-Oct., 2024: “World’s Fairs, Expositions, & Centennial Celebrations of the Victorian Era” (Ames, IA)
The Farm House Museum at Iowa State University in Ames is hosting an exhibition on “World's Fairs, Expositions, & Centennial Celebrations of the Victorian Era” from February through October, 2024. This exhibition illustrates through objects and narrative the earliest World’s Fair in 1851 London, through several in Paris, and the Centennial and World’s Columbian Exhibitions in the United States. The University Museums’ permanent collection includes several objects that were souvenirs [...]
The most admired and the most criticized of the sculpture at the 1893 World’s Fair
Daniel Chester French’s Statue of the Republic … “was the most admired and the most criticized of the sculpture at the World’s Fair—admired because of its magnificent proportions and criticized by many artists because they claimed to see nothing artistic in a female figure with both arms raised. Its fate as a work of art was sealed when some unkind critic saw in the rear elevation of the figure [...]
Columbian Cocktails at The Meadowlark in Chicago
A secret bar sits along a quiet side street in Chicago’s Logan Square neighborhood, nestled inside an unassuming brick building. Look for the door underneath the small bird cut-out sign and step inside the dimly lit vintage lounge. The menu offers many splendid options for craft cocktail aficionados … and a special treat for Columbian Exposition enthusiasts. Last summer, The Meadowlark launched an 1893 World’s Fair themed menu titled [...]
161. Picturesque World’s Fair – The Golden Door, from the Wooded Island
THE GOLDEN DOOR, FROM THE WOODED ISLAND.— Among the great number of photographs, taken from different points of view, of the famous "Golden Door" it is doubtful if any surpassed in charming effect that from which the accompanying illustration is taken. The point afforded on the Wooded Island seems to have been at just the right distance from the Transportation Building and in just the right direction to allow [...]
Taking her Valentine to the World’s Fair
From the February 1893 Illustrated World's Fair: TED.—“Kit, can I be your Valentine? I’m savin’ pennies now.” KIT.—“Yes, Ted, if you save enough to take me to the World’s Fair.” ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥
Help Preserve the Maine State Building from the 1893 World’s Fair
The Maine State Building, designed by architect Charles Sumner Frost, is one of the few remaining buildings from the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. After the close of the fair, the Ricker family of Poland Spring, Maine, purchased the building from the state. They had it dismantled, moved to Maine, and rebuilt on Poland Spring property, where it reopened in 1895 as a library and art gallery for [...]
Feb 7, 2023: The Viking Ship and the Chicago World’s Fair (online)
Learn about the "Viking Ship and the Chicago World's Fair" at a webinar by Timothy Boyce hosted by NorCham Chicago in collaboration with the Friends of the Viking Ship. This free event will be held vis Zoom on Wednesday, February 7, 2023, at 7:00 p.m. Please register at: https://www.norchamchicago.org/events/the-viking-ship-and-the-chicago-worlds-fair-1
A Brief History of the Midway Plaisance
The Chicago Maroon student newspaper has published a brief history of the Midway Plaisance that runs through the University of Chicago campus. Feifei Mei’s “From Mudway Nuisance to Midway Plaisance” explores the mile-long park (not owned by the University) from Frederick Law Olmstead and Calvert Vaux’s original design and name, its use as the entertainment district for the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, evolution in the hands of the Chicago [...]
A Columbian Exposition jigsaw puzzle oddity
As January 29 is National Puzzle Day, let’s take a look at an unusual jigsaw puzzle depicting the 1893 World’s Fair. A jigsaw puzzle titled "The 1893 World's Fair" from the Nice Card Company shows an impossible view of MacMonnies Fountain and the Agricultural Building. Produced by the Nice Card Company, “The 1893 World’s Fair” is a 500-piece, 18-by-24-inch jigsaw puzzle. The assembled image is a photograph [...]
Jan-Dec, 2024: Dress worn at the 1893 World’s Fair on Display (Ripon, WI)
The small city of Ripon, Wisconsin, sent 1,375 of its citizens to experience the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. This was one-third of the city’s population at that time, reports the Ripon Press. A dress worn by one Ripon visitor to the World's Fair is a part of the collection at the Ripon Historical Society and is on display through the end of 2024 as part of its [...]
160. Picturesque World’s Fair – Entrance to Fisheries Arcade
ENTRANCE TO FISHERIES ARCADE.—The Fisheries Building, because of the peculiar form of the site to which it was relegated, consisted of a rectangular central structure connected by curved arcades with circular pavilions on either side. The view here given is that of an entrance to one of the connecting arcades, and affords an excellent idea of the graceful and novel decoration resorted to in this structure, together with an [...]
Kaz Rowe Ranks the Weirdest Things at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair
YouTuber Kaz Rowe has posted an engaging video “Ranking the Weirdest Things at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair” that explores twenty-five quirky, surprising, or just-plain-strange attractions of the Columbian Exposition and ranks them on a scale from “slumgullion” to “some pumpkins.” From the Ferris Wheel to the Mammoth Cheese to the Windmill exhibit, visitors to the Chicago fair were treated to a salmagundi of curiosities. During an interlude in [...]
“Making the best show for the least money”
It’s what’s on the outside that matters, according to one engineer of the 1893 World’s Fair. That’s because most buildings for the Columbian Exposition were designed to be temporary and constructed using a coating of staff—a mixture of plaster and jute fiber—applied to metal and steel frames and creating superficial appearance of white marble. The excerpt below comes from Joseph Kendall Freitag’s article “The World’s Fair Buildings” in the [...]
Nixon Waterman Dreams of the World’s Fair
A prolific writer of prose and verse, Nixon Waterman (1859–1944) is credited with having conducted the first all-verse column in newspaper history, for the Chicago Herald. He lived and wrote in Chicago in the years before and during the 1893 World’s Fair. Waterman’s light-hearted and pun-riddled verse, often on topics of Christopher Columbus or the emerging Exposition fairgrounds in Jackson Park, filled spots throughout the run Jewell N. Halligan’s [...]
January 2024 Trivia Question
Our seasonal newsletter includes a “Palmer Puzzler” exclusive to those who subscribe. (You can sign up here.) The first person to send us the correct answer wins a small prize. The January 2024 Trivia Question The Ceremonies for Closing Day of the 1893 World’s Fair, scheduled for October 30, were abruptly cancelled following the murder of Mayor Carter Harrison two days earlier. The celebration was to have ended with [...]
Feb. 10, 2024: “S. S. Christopher Columbus with Todd Gordon” (Plymouth, WI)
A program on the S.S. Christopher Columbus whaleback steamer, used to transport visitors to and from the 1893 World’s Fair, will be sponsored by the Sheboygan County Historical Research Center on Saturday, February 10, 2024. Part of the Center’s “Second Saturdays — Journeys Into Local History” series, “S. S. Christopher Columbus with Todd Gordon” will explore the history of the steamer that was built to ferry passengers from downtown [...]
159. Picturesque World’s Fair – The North Front of the Agriculture Building and Lawn
THE NORTH FRONT OF THE AGRICULTURE BUILDING, AND LAWN.—Between the magnificent Agriculture Building and the Grand Basin was a lawn not very broad, but nearly a thousand feet in length, resting the eye with its strip of green, and giving room for a just estimate of the architectural beauties displayed above. In the view given here is afforded not only a charming perspective of the Agriculture Building's graceful front, [...]
Christmas to a child
“The child dancing with life and delight all through the days before Christmas is a fair emblem of what society should be in the presence of coming events … The meeting of Nations in 1893, the meeting on the shores of Lake Michigan, the meeting in a young republic, the meeting in such a period of intelligence unite to compose an event which should be to all Americans more [...]
Doctor Who goes to the 1893 World’s Fair
If you could travel anywhere in space and time, what would be your destination? If there is a golden colossus, a giant rotating wheel, mammoth chocolate statues, and a tower of oranges involved, then get yourself to the Doctor. Doctor Who and the TARDIS take a trip the fairgrounds of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Max Kashevsky’s “All’s Fair” a new audio-drama included in the collection Doctor Who: [...]