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The Book of the Fair

THE WORLD'S COLUMBIAN EXPOSITION of 1893—the largest world's fair up to that time—sprang from the most unpromising stretch of land: "a marsh when work upon it was begun, a sopping combination of low lands, water, and hummocks," noted one observer. Another called it "a treacherous morass, liable to frequent overflow ... bearing oaks and gums of such stunted habit and unshapely form as to add forlornness to the landscape." Over three years' time, thousands of men downed the trees; dredged out the muck and hauled it away in wheelbarrows; reshaped more than six hundred acres along Lake Michigan—six miles from downtown Chicago—into promontories and islands; and constructed viaducts, bridges, pathways, and paved boulevards. Countless more skilled workers and laborers—using more than eighteen thousand tons of iron and steel—framed fourteen massive structures around a broad lagoon and plaza to create the Court of Honor, the centerpiece of the fair.

Although a different architect designed each building in the court, chief planner Daniel Burnham required all of the buildings to be adorned with neoclassical arches, towers, and pinnacles; all of the cornices to be set sixty feet above the ground; and all of the edifices to be painted white—the shade, one observer noted, "of darkened ivory or slightly smoked meerschaum." Such unified architecture, Burnham imagined, would create an exposition reminiscent of Venice, without the grime, raw sewage, or ruins. He even imported sixty gondolas from Italy to carry passengers along the waterways. The court came to be known as the White City, in part for the way its pale edifices gleamed in the prairie night.

Never had there been so much light in one place—and it was all electric: 200,000 incandescent bulbs traced the edges of the edifices, and countless more lit the interiors of the massive exhibition halls; 6,000 arc lights on twelve-foot-high posts lined the paths and walkways. That light glinted in the lagoons and bounced off the fountain waters; it glittered in the wakes of the gondolas and the currents of Lake Michigan. Such brilliance seemed all the more miraculous because there were no leaning poles and sagging wires, nothing obvious carrying the current: so as not to mar the beauty and unity of the buildings, the wires ran underground.

Colored lights shone as well. From the rooftops, search-lights fashioned with blue, green, red, and violet slides swept the city and waterways; colored bulbs illuminated water fountains "so bewildering no eye can find the loveliest, their vagaries of motion so entrancing no heart can keep its steady beating." Every night, fireworks went off from different locations. "There would be a dozen or more rockets sent up all at once, and they would all explode together, almost filling the air with red, blue, and green stars, which floated ... for a moment, and then dropped slowly into the water," remembered one fairgoer. The incandescent bulbs, the arc lamps, the search-lights, the fireworks—separately each would have astonished nineteenth-century eyes; together, they overwhelmed. "It is the part that each one plays in the general effect," wrote one commentator, "all contributing to give this wondrous display the aspect of a veritable fairyland, to raise it, for the moment, almost beyond the realm of matter."

Night at the fair had come a long way since London's Crystal Palace, or Great Exhibition of 1851, which had closed at dusk. Not until the 1867 Paris Exposition did a world's fair stay open at night. There gas and oil lamps "were used lavishly[,]...music and theatricals were supplied of satisfactory character and quality, restaurants and cafés were kept open, and the exposition generally was given as gay and festive an air as possible. The prodigal expenditure of time, money and labor were without avail, however, and the effort to force attendance after dark was a signal failure, solely because of the insufficient light, and the refusal of the people to be entertained in the dark." Only in the 1880s did evenings at fairs and expositions