Carl Rohl-Smith Archives - Chicago's 1893 Worlds Fair

The Plaster Lighting Catcher of the 1893 World’s Fair: Carl Rohl-Smith’s Benjamin Franklin statue (Part 2)
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The Plaster Lighting Catcher of the 1893 World’s Fair: Carl Rohl-Smith’s Benjamin Franklin statue (Part 2)

HISTORY

The Plaster Lighting Catcher of the 1893 World’s Fair: Carl Rohl-Smith’s Benjamin Franklin statue (Part 2)

[Part 1 of this article describes the commission and construction of Carl Rohl-Smith’s statue of Benjamin Franklin for the Electricity Building at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition.] “I begin to be almost sorry I was born so soon, since I cannot have the happiness of knowing what will be known one hundred years hence.” —Benjamin Franklin, July 27, 1783 The capital of the world vanished like a sweet dream after the fairgrounds of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in [...]

By Scott|2022-09-04T09:03:18-05:00September 4th, 2022|Categories: HISTORY|Tags: Benjamin Franklin (statue), Carl Rohl-Smith, Electricity Building, George Pullman, John J. Boyle, Richard Henry Park, Solon S. Beman, Theodore Roosevelt|0 Comments

The Plaster Lighting Catcher of the 1893 World’s Fair: Carl Rohl-Smith’s Benjamin Franklin statue (Part 1)

“The scientists says that electricity is life. Then Jackson Park is of a truth a living thing.” — H. D. Northrop, The World's Fair as Seen in One Hundred Days (1893) A crowd of fans sporting blue and red poured out of the new Franklin Field in Philadelphia on the first day of October in 1895, a warm and sunny start to the college football season. Elated with the Quaker’s 40–0 victory over the visiting team from Swarthmore College, [...]

By Scott|2022-09-04T09:06:10-05:00September 3rd, 2022|Categories: HISTORY|Tags: Benjamin Franklin (statue), Carl Rohl-Smith, Electricity Building, Enid Yandell, Henry Van Brunt, Herman Vilhelm Bissen, Mark Twain|1 Comment

Echoes of the White City Part 3: “Fourteen Villages and a Jail”

Entering Battery D Armory, visitors to “Echoes of the White City” faced a replica in miniature of one of the greatest attractions of the 1893 World’s Fair