Overview of the White City:
Exposition planners wanted to showcase the nation, still coming to terms with the Civil War that had ended 28 years earlier. They also wanted to demonstrate Chicago’s international stature just 22 years after much of the city had been destroyed by fire. Daniel Burnham served as the fair’s lead architect and oversaw the design and planning of the fair’s main buildings. These massive, neoclassical structures came to be known, collectively, as the White City. Despite their imposing appearance, the buildings were made from wood frames wrapped in staff, a plaster mixture that created the illusion of stone. When the sun hit the facades, the buildings would actually glisten in the light. The White City stood for less than six months. The exposition closed in late October 1893 and, that winter, almost all of the buildings were destroyed by fire. Only the Palace of Fine Arts, its staff replaced with concrete, still stands, as Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry.
The White city was not only defined by the buildings but also the landscape. Burnham and Frederick Law Olmsted, the architect who designed New york's Central Park, transformed Jackson Park on the South Side of Chicago from a swamp marsh to a compilation of lagoons, reflecting pools, and lounging gardens.
Overview of the Midway:
What exactly did “civilization” mean? Part of the answer came from the monumental exhibition palaces stuffed to overflowing with technologies of industrial and agricultural production as well as exhibits of fine art that made up the White City. Another part of the answer was provided by negative example through exhibits and concessions arranged along the Midway Plaisance, a mile-long avenue that ran at a right angle to the White City and blended education with amusement.
While the White City featured monumental buildings to exhibit the fine arts, industry, and agriculture, the Midway Plaisance took on a very different form and character. Exposition planners intended the Midway to be a site for entertainment, as well as education. For the Midway’s ethnographic exhibits, groups of people from around the world—Indonesia, West Africa, Germany—were brought to Chicago to be put on display in buildings designed to recreate their “native” villages. At the same time, the Midway became a prototype for the amusement park and included the first Ferris wheel as well as numerous shows and cafes. With its wheel designed by George Ferris revolving high above the fairgrounds, its notorious—at least by Victorian standards—belly dancers, and its varied cuisine, the Midway's multiple fascinations challenged the White City's unity and dignity. Indeed, the Midway Plaisance is perhaps best understood as a cultural hothouse that generated many novel mass cultural forms (Riverview Park and Coney Island, for instance, were direct offshoots of the Midway) that would lend a distinctive character to American culture as it evolved over the course of the twentieth century.
However, the Midway was not without its critics. Many prominent African American's and Women spoke out against the representation of these groups at the fair. As tensions between the White City and the Midway Plaisance made clear, the World's Columbian Exposition reflected broader struggles in American society over the future course of American society and culture. Concerns about the power of the exposition to shape the future were also apparent in the struggles fought by African Americans and women over their representation at the fair.
Exposition planners wanted to showcase the nation, still coming to terms with the Civil War that had ended 28 years earlier. They also wanted to demonstrate Chicago’s international stature just 22 years after much of the city had been destroyed by fire. Daniel Burnham served as the fair’s lead architect and oversaw the design and planning of the fair’s main buildings. These massive, neoclassical structures came to be known, collectively, as the White City. Despite their imposing appearance, the buildings were made from wood frames wrapped in staff, a plaster mixture that created the illusion of stone. When the sun hit the facades, the buildings would actually glisten in the light. The White City stood for less than six months. The exposition closed in late October 1893 and, that winter, almost all of the buildings were destroyed by fire. Only the Palace of Fine Arts, its staff replaced with concrete, still stands, as Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry.
The White city was not only defined by the buildings but also the landscape. Burnham and Frederick Law Olmsted, the architect who designed New york's Central Park, transformed Jackson Park on the South Side of Chicago from a swamp marsh to a compilation of lagoons, reflecting pools, and lounging gardens.
Overview of the Midway:
What exactly did “civilization” mean? Part of the answer came from the monumental exhibition palaces stuffed to overflowing with technologies of industrial and agricultural production as well as exhibits of fine art that made up the White City. Another part of the answer was provided by negative example through exhibits and concessions arranged along the Midway Plaisance, a mile-long avenue that ran at a right angle to the White City and blended education with amusement.
While the White City featured monumental buildings to exhibit the fine arts, industry, and agriculture, the Midway Plaisance took on a very different form and character. Exposition planners intended the Midway to be a site for entertainment, as well as education. For the Midway’s ethnographic exhibits, groups of people from around the world—Indonesia, West Africa, Germany—were brought to Chicago to be put on display in buildings designed to recreate their “native” villages. At the same time, the Midway became a prototype for the amusement park and included the first Ferris wheel as well as numerous shows and cafes. With its wheel designed by George Ferris revolving high above the fairgrounds, its notorious—at least by Victorian standards—belly dancers, and its varied cuisine, the Midway's multiple fascinations challenged the White City's unity and dignity. Indeed, the Midway Plaisance is perhaps best understood as a cultural hothouse that generated many novel mass cultural forms (Riverview Park and Coney Island, for instance, were direct offshoots of the Midway) that would lend a distinctive character to American culture as it evolved over the course of the twentieth century.
However, the Midway was not without its critics. Many prominent African American's and Women spoke out against the representation of these groups at the fair. As tensions between the White City and the Midway Plaisance made clear, the World's Columbian Exposition reflected broader struggles in American society over the future course of American society and culture. Concerns about the power of the exposition to shape the future were also apparent in the struggles fought by African Americans and women over their representation at the fair.