World’s Columbian Exposition
Chicago during the 1893 World’s Columbian
Exposition.
The World’s Columbian Exposition (also
called The Chicago World’s Fair),
a
World’s Fair, was held in Chicago in 1893, to
celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christoph-
er Columbus’s arrival in the New World. Ch-
icago bested New York City, Washington,
D.C. and St. Louis, Missouri, for the honor of
hosting the fair. The fair had a profound ef-
fect 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. pop-
ulation) attended the exposition during its
six-month run. Its scale and grandeur far ex-
ceeded the other world fairs, and it became a
symbol of the emerging American Exception-
alism, 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 fair-
grounds were not actually opened to the pub-
lic 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 des-
troyed much of the city in 1871. On October
9, 1893, the day designated as Chicago Day,
the fair set a record for outdoor event attend-
ance, drawing 716,881 persons to the fair.
Description
Forty-six nations participated in the fair, in-
cluding Haiti, which selected Frederi