The Chicago Orchestra’s 1892 Premiere of Tchaikovsky’s “The Nutcracker Suite”

One of America’s most beloved holiday artistic traditions originated in imperial Russia and came to the United States through Chicago at the time of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition. On October 22, 1892, an audience of Chicagoans—joined by distinguished guests in town for the World’s Fair Dedication Day exercises—gathered in the Auditorium to hear a concert by the Chicago Orchestra conducted by Theodore Thomas. During the third piece on the program, songs of waltzing flowers, terpsichorean reeds, and a [...]

By Scott|2025-12-02T09:28:00-06:00December 2nd, 2025|Categories: HISTORY|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |0 Comments
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The Architectural Influence of the 1893 World’s Fair on “Wicked”

Every way That you look in this city There’s something exquisite You’ll want to visit Before the day’s through! —“One Short Day” by Stephen Schwartz The 2024 blockbuster film Wicked takes audiences into the thrilling dreamworld of Oz. While visiting the Emerald City, attentive viewers may catch glimpses of the 1893 World’s Fair. Ever since L. Frank Baum “discovered” the Land of Oz and published The Wonderful Wizard of Oz in 1900—seven years after visiting the World’s Columbian Exposition [...]

By Scott|2024-11-24T12:29:48-06:00November 22nd, 2024|Categories: NEWS|Tags: , , |2 Comments
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May 7, 2024: DREAM CITY musical (Chicago)

A new musical about the 1893 World’s Fair takes the stage at Theater Wit in Chicago for one night only. Dream City, with book and lyrics by June Finfer and music by Elizabeth Doyle, will be offered as a staged reading on May 7, 2024, at 7:30 PM. Finfer and Doyle’s musical is a revision of Burnham’s Dream: The White City, staged in 2018. This new version featured five new songs, two new characters (including a villain), and no [...]

By Scott|2024-06-04T09:23:08-05:00April 22nd, 2024|Categories: EVENTS (past), THEATER|Tags: , , , , , , |0 Comments
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Greetings from a Transportation Angel

We were delighted to hear from several readers about the lovely images featured in our recent post “Angels in the Spandrels: The Winged Decorations of Louis Sullivan’s Transportation Building” We’ve made the image available on greeting cards (single, pack of 10, and pack of 20) and a few other items through our Café Press shop at https://www.cafepress.com/worldsfairchicago1893. We greatly enjoy sharing what we learn about the 1893 World’s Fair with other researchers and enthusiasts. This non-profit, educational website is [...]

By Scott|2024-05-29T14:27:40-05:00April 17th, 2024|Categories: PRODUCTS|Tags: , |1 Comment
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Angels in the Spandrels: The Winged Decorations of Louis Sullivan’s Transportation Building

Critics glorified and reviled Louis Sullivan’s renegade design for the Transportation Building at the 1893 World’s Fair. The polychromatic color scheme and the grand Golden Door received the most commentary at the time of the Columbian Exposition, and both elements continue to fascinate students of architecture today. Louis Sullivan’s striking design for the Transportation Building featured a polychromatic façade and majestic “Golden Door” entrance on the east side. [Image from Picturesque World’s Fair. W.B. Conkey, 1894; digitally edited [...]

By Scott|2024-09-06T10:41:43-05:00April 14th, 2024|Categories: HISTORY, RESEARCH|Tags: , , |4 Comments
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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 of an absolute presentation of detail, while, at the same [...]

By Randy|2025-04-24T17:45:52-05:00February 18th, 2024|Categories: REPRINTS|Tags: , , , , , |0 Comments
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Season’s Readings: 2022 Books about the World’s Columbian Exposition

2022 brought several additions to the World’s Columbian Exposition bookshelf.

By Scott|2024-02-17T10:00:49-06:00December 1st, 2022|Categories: FICTION, NEWS, PRODUCTS, RESEARCH|Tags: , , , , |0 Comments
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Daniel Burnham on Architecture and “The Intellectual Reflex of the Exposition”

What influence would the White City erected for the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago likely have on the development of American architecture in the years to come? Pondering that question, architectural critic Montgomery Schuyler noted that Daniel Burnham, Director of Works for the Columbian Exposition, offered a vision that was able to “crystallize into a lucid and specific form a general hazy expectation.” Burnham’s made his comments in this passage for a Chicago newspaper, and Schuyler reprinted them in [...]

By Scott|2022-08-14T06:57:13-05:00August 14th, 2022|Categories: REPRINTS|Tags: , |0 Comments
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Sept. 24, 2021: “Romanticism to Ruin: Two Lost Works of Sullivan and Wright” (Chicago)

An exhibit at Wrightwood 659 in Chicago explores two lost architectural masterworks: the Garrick Theatre Building in Chicago designed by Dankmar Adler and Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright’s Larkin Building in Buffalo. Curated by John Vinci, Tim Samuelson, Eric Nordstrom, Chris Ware and Jonathan D. Katz, “Romanticism to Ruin: Two Lost Works of Sullivan and Wright” uses fragments, drawings, photography, and narrative to elucidate the life and death of these two iconic buildings. The first section of the [...]

By Scott|2022-03-27T14:30:36-05:00January 11th, 2022|Categories: EVENTS (past), EXHIBITS (past)|Tags: , , , |0 Comments
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119. Picturesque World’s Fair – The Transportation Building

THE TRANSPORTATION BUILDING.—The Transportation Building was unique among the great structures of the Columbian Exposition in that it was the single departure from a general rule, the contrast and the foil to all the others. It was distinct in its style of architecture, and alone was decorated exteriorly in colors. It was not of those buildings which won for the Exposition the title of "The White City." The main building, located just west of the south end of the [...]

By Randy|2021-06-08T09:23:03-05:00May 30th, 2021|Categories: REPRINTS|Tags: , , , , |0 Comments
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118. Picturesque World’s Fair – The Great Steam Hammer

THE GREAT STEAM HAMMER.—One exhibit in the Transportation Building always attracted curious inspection. To many unfamiliar with the heavy machinery used in the vast manufactories of today, its use was not apparent, but to those informed in such fields it was an object of decided interest. This was the model of the monster steam hammer in use by the Bethlehem Iron Company, of Pennsylvania, the largest steam hammer in the world. Though painted to represent iron, the model was [...]

By Randy|2025-05-28T09:22:45-05:00May 9th, 2021|Categories: REPRINTS|Tags: , , , , |0 Comments
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90. Picturesque World’s Fair – Details of the Golden Doorway

PICTURESQUE WORLD’S FAIR. AN ELABORATE COLLECTION OF COLORED VIEWS Page 90 - DETAILS OF THE "GOLDEN DOORWAY." DETAILS OF THE "GOLDEN DOORWAY."—The magnificent entrance to the Transportation Building, known popularly as the "Golden Doorway"—though it was not golden, but green and silver—was not, architecturally considered, complete with the quintuple arches and doorway proper alone, but included, as part of the entrance effects, a system of elaborate lateral ornamentation, the details of which, on one side, are given in the [...]

By Randy|2024-11-21T10:04:01-06:00November 16th, 2019|Categories: REPRINTS|Tags: , , , |0 Comments
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Frank Lloyd Wright’s Eulogy for Louis H. Sullivan

The gravestone for Louis H. Sullivan, in Graceland Cemetery in Chicago. Louis H. Sullivan (September 3, 1856 – April 14, 1924) “The work the master did may die with him—no great matter. What he represented has lived in spite of all drift—all friction, all waste, all slip—since time began for man. In this sense was Louis Sullivan true to tradition—in this sense will the divine spark, given to him from the deep centre of the universe and [...]

By Scott|2020-04-18T21:12:19-05:00April 14th, 2019|Categories: REPRINTS|Tags: , , |0 Comments
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Louis Sullivan’s Transportation Building … in Green

Adler & Sullivan’s Transportation Building. [Image from The World’s Columbian Exposition Portfolio of Views by C. D. Arnold and H. D. Higinbotham (C. B. Woodward Co., 1893).] Finding references to the 1893 World’s Fair--especially in unexpected places--can be a delight. All the more so when images of the White City show up in the context of another personal passion. A few weeks ago, the yellow brick road led to the White City. The Paramount Theater in Aurora, Illinois, [...]

By Scott|2019-01-20T19:07:41-06:00January 20th, 2019|Categories: NEWS, THEATER|Tags: , , , |0 Comments
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“World’s Fairs and the Death of Optimism”

Darran Anderson’s essay “World’s Fairs and the Death of Optimism” (citylab.com, October 3, 2018) addresses the fading luster of World’s Fairs and uses some examples from the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago to illustrate his point. “World’s Fairs fell from grace,” writes Anderson. “Who could blame nostalgia towards witnessing the Crystal Palace, the head of the Statue of Liberty in a Parisian park, the extra-terrestrial Trylon and Perisphere, or the Tower of the Sun? This was bolstered by [...]

By Scott|2018-10-19T16:14:35-05:00October 20th, 2018|Categories: NEWS|Tags: , , , , , , , , |1 Comment
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Sept. 8-Oct. 13, 2018: “Chicago’s Gold Coast Patronage and the 1893 World’s Fair” Tours (Chicago)

In conjunction with their exhibit “Treasures from the White City: The Chicago World’s Fair of 1893," the Richard H. Driehaus Museum in Chicago is offering a series of walking tours titled “Chicago's Gold Coast Patronage and the 1893 World's Fair” on Saturdays from 1-2:30 pm between September 8 to October 13. Led by Sally Kalmbach, the tour will explore Chicago’s famous Gold Coast neighborhood. Still one the most beautiful and architecturally rich neighborhoods in the city, the Gold Coast [...]

By Scott|2022-03-05T10:34:28-06:00September 2nd, 2018|Categories: EVENTS (past)|Tags: , , , , , , , , , |0 Comments
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Icons of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition notecards

The Museum of Science and Industry (MSI) in Chicago held their “Revel in the White City” virtual simulation at the museum on May 19 and May 20 to a packed auditorium. It was spectacular. Making the event even more festive were a set of posters designed by Chicago artist David Lee Csicsko, titled “Icons of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition.” Greeting cards of the set of eight images were available for sale at the museum. Csicsko is an acclaimed [...]

By Scott|2022-03-05T10:20:57-06:00May 20th, 2018|Categories: PRODUCTS, VISUAL ARTS|Tags: , , , , , , , , , |0 Comments
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Opening Day, Part 12: Tour of the Fairgrounds

Tour of the Fairgrounds This is Part 12 of our series “Opening Day of the World’s Fair,” which explores the events of May 1, 1893, at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. The full series can be found here. After the “Banquet of Nations” luncheon, President Cleveland and his entourage embarked on a whirlwind tour of the Columbian Exposition grounds and buildings. They departed from the north entrance of the Administration Building where carriages were waiting. “President Cleveland [...]

By Scott|2019-03-24T08:40:49-05:00May 3rd, 2018|Categories: OPENING DAY|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |0 Comments
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Artifacts of the 1893 World’s Fair Unearthed in Jackson Park

The Chicago Tribune reports that archaeologists have unearthed artifacts of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Jackson Park. In late 2017, researchers working for the Illinois State Archaeological Survey excavated seven sites in the area of the proposed Obama Presidential Center (OPC). Dig locations were on the west side of Jackson Park as well as in the eastern edge of the Midway Plaisance, where a parking garage for the OPC was at the time planned but has since been scrapped. [...]

By Scott|2022-04-29T18:38:28-05:00March 24th, 2018|Categories: NEWS|Tags: , , , , , |0 Comments
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Chicago: City of the Century (2003)

News of the passing of David Ogden Stiers on March 3 has garnered tributes to the actor’s unforgettable role on M*A*S*H and his voice performances for several animated film from Disney Studios. Mr. Stiers also played a small but valuable role in the history of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, serving as the narrator of one of the first documentaries about the great fair. Chicago: City of the Century, based on the 1996 book of the same title by [...]

By Scott|2024-05-19T17:54:09-05:00March 9th, 2018|Categories: NEWS, VIDEO|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , |0 Comments
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