World's Columbian Exposition of 1893
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By: Ann Shi
for GeoWeb: Virtual Worlds as Public Infrastructure, a course at The Harvard University Graduate School of Design
- May 13, 2010
This is a 3D model of the Columbian Exposition that took place in Chicago in 1893. Forty-six nations participated in the fair, constructing exhibits and pavilions that drew nearly 26 million visitors to the more than 200 buildings that were built for the fair. The buildings only existed temporarily for the duration of the fair, for less than a year, before they were burned down in a fire. Using historical images and information, a general massing of the buildings that were built for the Exposition are created in SketchUp, and brought into Google Earth to create an idea of what the fairgrounds looked like.
The video tour takes you through a few of the buildings and sites that were at the fair:
1. Ferris Wheel
2. Palace of Fine Arts
3. US Government Building
4. Horticulture Building
5. Transportation Building
6. Manufacturers and Liberal Arts Building
7. Grand Basin
8. Agriculture Building
9. Machinery Building
10. Administration Building
11. Bird's Eye View of the Fair
The World's Columbian Exposition - also known as The Chicago World's Fair took place in 1893 and celebrated the 400th's anniversary of Christopher Columbus's arrival in the New World. Chicago bested New York City; Washington, D.C.; and St. Louis, Missouri, for the honor of hosting the fair. The fair had a profound effect on architecture, the arts, Chicago's self-image, and American industrial optimism. The Chicago Columbian Exposition was, in large part, designed by Daniel Burnham and Frederick Law Olmsted. It was the prototype of what Burnham and his colleagues thought a city should be. It was designed to follow Beaux Arts principles of design, namely, European Classical Architecture principles based on symmetry and balance.
The exposition covered more than 600 acres (2.4 km2), featuring nearly 200 new buildings of classical architecture, canals and lagoons, and people and cultures from around the world. Over 27 million people (equivalent to about half the U.S. population) attended the exposition during its six-month run. Its scale and grandeur far exceeded the other world fairs, and it became a symbol of the emerging American Exceptionalism, much in the same way that the Great Exhibition became a symbol of the Victorian era United Kingdom.
Dedication ceremonies for the fair were held on October 21, 1892, but the fairgrounds were not actually opened to the public until May 1, 1893. The fair continued until October 30, 1893. In addition to recognizing the 400th anniversary of the discovery of the New World, the fair also served to show the world that Chicago had risen from the ashes of the Great Chicago Fire, which had destroyed much of the city in 1871. On October 9, 1893, the day designated as Chicago Day, the fair set a record for outdoor event attendance, drawing 716,881 persons to the fair.
The exposition was located in Jackson Park and on the Midway Plaisance on 630 acres (2.5 km?) in the neighborhoods of South Shore, Jackson Park Highlands, Hyde Park and Woodlawn. Charles H. Wacker was the Director of the Fair. The layout of the fairgrounds was created by Frederick Law Olmsted, and the Beaux-Arts architecture of the buildings was under the direction of Daniel Burnham, Director of Works for the fair. Renowned local architect Henry Ives Cobb designed several buildings for the exposition. The Director of the American Academy in Rome, Francis David Millet, directed the painted mural decorations. Indeed, it was a coming-of-age for the arts and architecture of the "American Renaissance", and it showcased the burgeoning neoclassical and Beaux-Arts styles.
Excerpted from The Book of the Fair:
[I]n the section of the southern park system known as Jackson Park, an
almost triangular piece of land 586 acres in extent, stretching for a mile
and a half along the shore of the lake, nearly seven miles southeastward
from the business quarter of the city, and skirted on its western verge by
the Illinois Central railroad. Connecting it with Washington Park is the
Midway plaisance, a narrow strip of ground a mile in length and somewhat
less than a furlong in width, lined with a border of shade trees and dotted
with miniature lakes.
More than 200 buildings occupied the exposition's grounds; A 1896 Scientific American article recalls that almost all of the buildings that comprised the White City were reduced to ashes in a fire on July 3, 1894 or simply dismantled. Today, the only remaining building is what used to be the Palace of Fine Arts, and now houses the Museum of Science and Industry. Like most of the other buildings, the Palace of Fine Arts had exterior walls of staff, a temporary building material made from plaster of paris and hemp fiber. It housed the Field Columbian Museum after the fair's closing until 1920. During the late 1920s, the building was reduced to its steel skeleton and brick interior walls and rebuilt in stone. The structure was opened again to the public as the Museum of Science and Industry in 1931. The rest of the fairgrounds was returned to public parkland and ponds/lagoons reconfigured.
Present Day
Today, only the Palace of Fine Arts building still exists. All of the other buildings from the Exposition were either demolished, burned down, or moved elsewhere. The fairgrounds were converted back into park space, and the only other feature that remains in common is the Wooded Island.
Wooded Island: in 1893 and Present