How Did The Chicago World Fair Of 1893 Impact The City Of Chicago?

To what extent did the Chicago World Fair of 1893 impact the city of Chicago?

Background

The World Fair of 1893 could not have happened at a better time for the city of Chicago. When the fair took place the city was beginning to recover from a depression and the fire that ultimately destroyed the city. This fair gave Chicago the opportunity to show the world what they were capable of creating and building. Chicago had to fight for their right to host the fair as it was competing with many, already great, cities for that spot. Fighting for this right lead the city politics to become corrupt since they were doing everything in their power to gain the opportunity to hold the fair in their city.

Introduction: In 1893, the World’s Columbian Exposition

Also, new cultures were introduced by the fair which were portrayed in the Midway Plaisance. The Midway was “understood as a cultural hot house the generated many novel mass cultural forms”(Encyclopedia of Chicago). Although many were pleased with the way the Midway illustrated the cultures, one particular group that was not were the African-Americans. The Midway, according to Frederick Douglass, had fake “African villages to exhibit the Negro as a repulsive savage”. Douglass however, many an effort to try and show the progress of the Africa-Americans since being freed from slavery , but it soon turned on him as the organizers of the fair turned “Colored People’s day” into “ a cruel joke by offering free watermelons to African American fairgoers”(The World’s Columbian Exposition). The fair in a way, made way for racism to rise in the city of

Burnham, Richard Morris, Charles Mckim, Robert Peabody, George B. Post, Henry Van Brunt, Louis Sullivan, and William LeBaron Jenney. They met in Chicago in 1891 to first discuss the designs for the fair. Together they began to draft magnificent visions for the buildings that would be built for the fair. By 1891, over 40,000 skilled laborers and workers were already employed to begin construction of the fair. With the fair came many new ideas for the type of buildings that are built today. The fair gave way and inspired much of the urban city we see in the city of Chicago today. The buildings built during the fair “was not merely a matter of style, by something that reflected and directed the character of those who lived within it” (Sigur). When the building were planned out , before the fair , the architects wanted it to reflect a new utopian city. Therefore, it reflected those who lived in the city because modernization was happening during the time , thus people wanted more affluent way of life