DOROTHY AND HER FRIENDS WERE DAZZLED:
The White City
The Fair was officially known as the World’s Columbian Exposition. It ran from May through October, hosting 39 states and about 20 foreign countries, with an estimated 65,000 exhibits on display. Like its subsidiary Parliament, it also had a stated purpose: to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Columbus’s “discovery”of the Americas in 1492 (the Fair opened a year late because of planning delays). You might expect such an event would be heavy on Columbus-themed exhibits, and there were replicas of his three ships and the “Columbian Fountain,” then the world’s largest, but that was about it. The Fair’s actual raison d’etre was to showcase “all of the highest and best achievements of modern civilization”–modern Western civilization, that is, particularly the American variety–and
all that was strange, beautiful, artistic, and inspiring; a vast and wonderful university of the arts and sciences, teaching a noble lesson in history, art, science, discovery and invention, designed to stimulate the youth of this and future generations to greater and more heroic endeavor. [http://members.cox.net/academia/cassatt8.html]
Over the last few decades of the 20th century Columbus’s stock as an explorer has tumbled precipitously. Out where I live on the Western (and some would say looney) fringe of the country, October 12 is now celebrated as “Indigenous Peoples Day,” and just a few years ago my daughter’s public school, Columbus Elementary, was renamed by popular vote after African-American Rosa Parks. It’s doubtful this country would as a whole eagerly support any Columbus-related anniversary–I don’t recall a celebration on the scale of Chicago for the 500th anniversary back in 1992–but in the early 1880s, when planning for the event was getting off the ground, he was still a revered national icon. Three cities–New York, St Louis, and Chicago–battled for the privilege of hosting the Fair, each promising millions of dollars for construction costs. The final decision was left up to a vote of Congress, and Chicago (still rebuilding from the devastating 1871 fire) squeaked in.
The centerpiece of the Fair was the so-called White City, nicknamed for the dozen or so neo-classically designed main exhibition halls, most for convenience sake painted white. Along with these buildings, and its clean, carefully planned streets, large central lagoon, Court of Honor and Grand Basin–an 1100-foot-long pool (which drew its water from next-door Lake Michigan) anchored on one end by “The Republic,” an imposing 65-foot tall statue, on the other by the Columbian Fountain–the City stood in sharp contrast to the typically polluted, chaotic American cities of the time. Most Fair-goers were duly impressed. President Grover Cleveland, who inaugurated the Fair with a stirring speech and a button-push to kick-start the Fountain, spoke for many when he called it a “stupendous thing.” American poet and editor Richard Watson Gilder was rhapsodically moved to pen “The White City,” casting it as the rebirth of an ancient Greek “temple and town”:
Say not, “Greece is no more.
Through the clear morn
On light winds borne
Her white winged soul sinks on the New World’s breast.
Ah! happy West–
Greece flowers anew, and all her temples soar!
Ironically the beauty of these structures was only skin deep. Most were fated to be torn down at the Fair’s end, and while their white-painted exteriors looked from a distance something like marble, they were actually made of “staff,” a mix of plaster, cement, and jute, in a word, stucco. And not everyone was awed by the City. A few forward-looking home-grown architects criticized the backward-looking, Eurocentric Beaux-Arts buildings. And for African Americans, egregiously under-represented at the Fair, the “white city” had an entirely different meaning. But its eventual destruction didn’t kill the City’s spirit, which survived, for better or worse, in its influence on 20th century American architecture and city planning. Then too, admired by Fair-goer Lyman Frank Baum, it was reborn as the Emerald City in the distant land of Oz where
... Dorothy and her friends were at first dazzled by the brilliancy of the wonderful city. The streets were lined with beautiful houses all built of green marble ... [wizard 89]
The Fair was officially known as the World’s Columbian Exposition. It ran from May through October, hosting 39 states and about 20 foreign countries, with an estimated 65,000 exhibits on display. Like its subsidiary Parliament, it also had a stated purpose: to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Columbus’s “discovery”of the Americas in 1492 (the Fair opened a year late because of planning delays). You might expect such an event would be heavy on Columbus-themed exhibits, and there were replicas of his three ships and the “Columbian Fountain,” then the world’s largest, but that was about it. The Fair’s actual raison d’etre was to showcase “all of the highest and best achievements of modern civilization”–modern Western civilization, that is, particularly the American variety–and
all that was strange, beautiful, artistic, and inspiring; a vast and wonderful university of the arts and sciences, teaching a noble lesson in history, art, science, discovery and invention, designed to stimulate the youth of this and future generations to greater and more heroic endeavor. [http://members.cox.net/academia/cassatt8.html]
Over the last few decades of the 20th century Columbus’s stock as an explorer has tumbled precipitously. Out where I live on the Western (and some would say looney) fringe of the country, October 12 is now celebrated as “Indigenous Peoples Day,” and just a few years ago my daughter’s public school, Columbus Elementary, was renamed by popular vote after African-American Rosa Parks. It’s doubtful this country would as a whole eagerly support any Columbus-related anniversary–I don’t recall a celebration on the scale of Chicago for the 500th anniversary back in 1992–but in the early 1880s, when planning for the event was getting off the ground, he was still a revered national icon. Three cities–New York, St Louis, and Chicago–battled for the privilege of hosting the Fair, each promising millions of dollars for construction costs. The final decision was left up to a vote of Congress, and Chicago (still rebuilding from the devastating 1871 fire) squeaked in.
The centerpiece of the Fair was the so-called White City, nicknamed for the dozen or so neo-classically designed main exhibition halls, most for convenience sake painted white. Along with these buildings, and its clean, carefully planned streets, large central lagoon, Court of Honor and Grand Basin–an 1100-foot-long pool (which drew its water from next-door Lake Michigan) anchored on one end by “The Republic,” an imposing 65-foot tall statue, on the other by the Columbian Fountain–the City stood in sharp contrast to the typically polluted, chaotic American cities of the time. Most Fair-goers were duly impressed. President Grover Cleveland, who inaugurated the Fair with a stirring speech and a button-push to kick-start the Fountain, spoke for many when he called it a “stupendous thing.” American poet and editor Richard Watson Gilder was rhapsodically moved to pen “The White City,” casting it as the rebirth of an ancient Greek “temple and town”:
Say not, “Greece is no more.
Through the clear morn
On light winds borne
Her white winged soul sinks on the New World’s breast.
Ah! happy West–
Greece flowers anew, and all her temples soar!
Ironically the beauty of these structures was only skin deep. Most were fated to be torn down at the Fair’s end, and while their white-painted exteriors looked from a distance something like marble, they were actually made of “staff,” a mix of plaster, cement, and jute, in a word, stucco. And not everyone was awed by the City. A few forward-looking home-grown architects criticized the backward-looking, Eurocentric Beaux-Arts buildings. And for African Americans, egregiously under-represented at the Fair, the “white city” had an entirely different meaning. But its eventual destruction didn’t kill the City’s spirit, which survived, for better or worse, in its influence on 20th century American architecture and city planning. Then too, admired by Fair-goer Lyman Frank Baum, it was reborn as the Emerald City in the distant land of Oz where
... Dorothy and her friends were at first dazzled by the brilliancy of the wonderful city. The streets were lined with beautiful houses all built of green marble ... [wizard 89]
