June 21, 2018: Celebrating the 125th Anniversary of the Ferris Wheel in Chicago and Santa Monica

UPDATE 6/21/2018: Navy Pier has cancelled this event: https://navypier.org/event/125th-anniversary-ferris-wheel/ The great Ferris Wheel opened to the public on Thursday June 21, 1893, at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Marking this anniversary will be celebrations of the Ferris Wheel at two of America’s most famous piers. Chicago’s Navy Pier and Santa Monica Pier will each commemorate George Washington Gale Ferris Jr.’s famous feat of engineering, which reached 264 feet into the sky above the Midway Plaisance. The festivities at Navy [...]

By Scott|2022-03-05T10:25:51-06:00June 8th, 2018|Categories: EVENTS (past)|Tags: , |0 Comments
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June 16, 2018: It’s Your Park Day (with tour) on Midway Plaisance

June 16, 2018, is "It's Your Park Day" in Chicago, the the Chicago Parks Foundation's annual citywide volunteer day, celebrating Chicago's beautiful green spaces and the communities who support them. One site includes Midway Plaisance Park, site of the great Midway attraction of the 1893 World's Fair. In addition to a park clean-up (all morning), there will be a free historical walking tour to mark the 125th anniversary of the World's Columbian Exhibition and the first Ferris Wheel located [...]

By Scott|2018-07-02T16:02:32-05:00June 2nd, 2018|Categories: EVENTS (past)|Tags: , |0 Comments
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PICTURESQUE WORLD’S FAIR – The Ferris Wheel (p. 48)

PICTURESQUE WORLD’S FAIR. AN ELABORATE COLLECTION OF COLORED VIEWS Page 48 – THE FERRIS WHEEL THE FERRIS WHEEL.—What the Eiffel Tower was to the Paris Exposition the Ferris Wheel was to the Columbian. Like the Eiffel Tower, it was a triumph of engineering and an example of metal construction on a gigantic scale, but it had the additional feature of activity. It was in motion, a monster plaything, a device for furnishing a novel experience to the multitude. The [...]

By Randy|2018-05-07T05:34:34-05:00May 7th, 2018|Categories: REPRINTS|Tags: , , , , |0 Comments
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May 11, 2018: Columbian Exposition Talk in St. Louis, MO

“Meet me in St. Louis, Louis. Meet me at the fair …” St. Louis hosted their own World’s Fair in 1904--an exposition with a Grand Basin with white palaces of Fine Arts, Electricity, Agriculture, Machinery, Liberal Arts, and Mines; statuary by Daniel Chester French; a Lagoon, international villages, a midway, and even the original Ferris Wheel. In May, the focus in that city will be on the World’s Fair held in Chicago a decade earlier. On Friday, May 11, [...]

By Scott|2022-03-05T10:19:33-06:00April 28th, 2018|Categories: EVENTS (past)|Tags: , |0 Comments
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A Visitor from Maine

First-hand accounts of visitors to the Columbian Exposition can provide a fascinating and unique perspective on the great World’s Fair of 1893. Freelance writer Dave Sargent writes in the April 13, 2018, issue of the Lewiston (Maine) Sun Journal about his grandmother’s visit to Chicago in July of 1893. She recorded her accounts in a personal journal and had her story published in a newspaper many years later. The Maine State Building, as depicted on the cover of the [...]

By Scott|2023-08-05T08:33:37-05:00April 15th, 2018|Categories: HISTORY|Tags: , , |0 Comments
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Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry Celebrates the 1893 World’s Fair

The Museum of Science and Industry (MSI) in Chicago is housed in one of the few buildings remaining from the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition: what was then the Palace of Fine Arts. To commemorate the 125th anniversary of the World’s Fair, the Museum has mounted two displays commemorating the historic event. Lego Ferris Wheel Adam Reed Tucker installing his LEGO Ferris Wheel model. [Image from the Museum of Science and Industry.] The original 264-foot Ferris Wheel left Jackson [...]

By Scott|2018-03-09T19:02:08-06:00March 10th, 2018|Categories: EXHIBITS (current), NEWS|Tags: , , |0 Comments
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Souvenir Music from the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893

March, waltz, polka, and hoochie koochie your way back to the 1893 World’s Fair with Souvenir Music from the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893, a new recording of vintage sheet music from Lake Forest College Press. Donald C. Meyer, Professor of Music at Lake Forest College, has assembled a fascinating collection of 18 pieces of music written for or about the Columbian Exposition. A trio of musicians (pianist Chris White, violinist Kate Carter, and baritone Brad Jungwirth) perform the [...]

By Scott|2023-10-20T21:25:15-05:00February 24th, 2018|Categories: AUDIO, NEWS, PRODUCTS|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , |2 Comments
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Happy National Ferris Wheel Day!

Up 'n' down Ferris wheel Tell me how does it feel To be so high Looking down here. -- Norah Jones "Carnival Town" Grab a box of chocolates and a bouquet of roses, because today is ... National Ferris Wheel Day! This annual celebration honors the anniversary of George Washington Gale Ferris, Jr.’s birth on February 14, 1859, in Galesburg, Illinois. Ferris, of course, was the engineer who invented the biggest attraction of the 1893 World’s Fair. More than 1.4 [...]

By Scott|2018-03-11T10:14:17-05:00February 14th, 2018|Categories: HISTORY|Tags: , , , |0 Comments
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“I’ll take the 1893 World’s Fair for $200, Alex”

Columbian Exposition fan Dorothy McFarland kindly shared with us some screenshots of the episode of Jeopardy that aired on January 17, 2018, which included the Round 1 category "The 1893 Chicago World’s Fair" ("You remember that," adds host Alex Trebek). The contestants did remember the fair, making a clean sweep of the category. Amanda Griggs provided the correct question to the $200 answer: "Illuminated by thousands of light bulbs, the building seen here was devoted to this new innovation [...]

By Scott|2022-12-10T10:10:33-06:00January 19th, 2018|Categories: NEWS, VIDEO|Tags: , , , , , |0 Comments
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PICTURESQUE WORLD’S FAIR. AN ELABORATE COLLECTION OF COLORED VIEWS (pp. 15-16)

PICTURESQUE WORLD’S FAIR. AN ELABORATE COLLECTION OF COLORED VIEWS Page 15 A VIEW IN MIDWAY PLAISANCE.—A city in itself was the Midway, picturesque certainly, and educational as well, however meretricious some of its droll features. It was the playground of the multitude and they learned much while they ate, drank, stared and were merry. The view above presented is from a point about the center of the west half of the Plaisance and a little west of the Ferris [...]

By Randy|2025-01-25T22:25:05-06:00December 26th, 2017|Categories: REPRINTS|Tags: , , , , , , |0 Comments
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Get Your (So-Called) Orange Cider

You’ve just taken the thrill ride of your life—ascending 264 feet into the air on a giant rotating wheel of iron, viewing the expansive fairgrounds of the Columbian Exposition from a perspective intended only for birds, and gently returning to terra firma in a car filled with scores of other passengers. You need a drink. Visitors to the 1893 World’s Fair walking along the Midway may have spotted a little beverage stand tucked underneath the east side of the [...]

By Randy|2022-10-15T17:52:50-05:00November 12th, 2017|Categories: HISTORY|Tags: , , , , , , , , |2 Comments
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1893 World’s Fair trading cards from Topps

Sports card collectors know the name Topps well. The company that has produced countless baseball cards and other sports trading cards, often packaged with a stick of chewing gum, also releases non-sports trading cards. One of their recent "vintage" collector's card lines is an "Allen & Ginter" series, named after the Virginia company that produced the first cigarette trading cards. Topps three Columbian Exposition trading cards from 2017 Earlier this year, Topps released a series of 20 [...]

By Scott|2017-10-27T17:15:56-05:00October 27th, 2017|Categories: PRODUCTS|Tags: , , , |0 Comments
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Palacio’s “World of Iron”

Imagine a colossal globe—six times larger in diameter than the “Spaceship Earth” geodesic sphere at Disney’s Epcot Center and supported by a base as tall as the original Ferris Wheel—towering over the 1893 Columbian Exposition fairgrounds. Miles of tramway would carry visitors along a spiral path rising inside the globe and then emerge and continue ascending around the exterior to an observation pinnacle eclipsing any man-made structure. That stupendous vision emerged from the mind of Alberto de Palacio in [...]

By Scott|2022-09-18T15:47:19-05:00October 13th, 2017|Categories: HISTORY|Tags: , |0 Comments
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“A Wheel With a View” in Summer 2017 Chicago History

Summer 2017 Chicago History magazine. Who can resist an unexpected trip to the Midway? While I always enjoy ripping opening the envelope to reveal the latest issue of Chicago History magazine published by the Chicago History Museum, the Summer 2017 issue offered a special treat. A gorgeous image of Charles Graham's painting of the Ferris Wheel graces the cover, complementing a 28-page feature, "A Wheel With a View" by Russell L. Lewis. His short essay on the [...]

By Scott|2022-03-05T09:47:53-06:00September 6th, 2017|Categories: NEWS|Tags: , |0 Comments
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