Images questions Chicago Fair- White City midway The white city worked as the ideal city in the United States Architecture and the systems (electricity, sanitation, regulation upper middle class dream of city Architectural hall, amusement zone Control not only civic centre also over the fun zone. Exterior warehouse kind of interior. urban space consumerism department store. Everything is about the show. fasade- architectural building part
Industrialization nationalism provide claim Czech Slovakia Finland Nationalism was big theme for Paris Universelle De Paris 1889 Ethnic idea accentual of Frenchness. Americanness The darker side of nationalism in the racism Colonial Empire (Phillippines) ideal of progress civilization get better and better civilized uncivilized
Louisiana Purchase 1904 idea of amusement zone in fair control by the same corporation social practice etc. People want to be not just educated but also make it fun Midway was kind of confused area. Music Hall, Saloon, real urban place high aspiration low quality Louisiana 1889 PARIS 3 out 4 Chicago world fAIR WORLD COLUMBIAN EXHIBITION 1889 Saint Louis world fair in 1889 nationalism how did it start. PHILLIPINE RESERVATION World Fair Chicago Columbian Exposition 1889 PARIS ST LOUIS LOUISIANA PURCHASE EXPOSITION READING QUESTION FOR FRANCE ARTWORK IN CULTURE (FRANCE) 100 YEARS AFTER REVOLUTION BIG FRENCH NATIONALISM FRENCH STARTED TO HAVE ART GALLERY SO MUCH PART OF THEIR PRIDE. HOW DOES OTHER COUNTRIES EXPRESS THEIR NATIONAL PRIDE? INVENTIONS, COLONIES TO HELP TO SHOW THEIR POWER. INSPIRATIONAL IMAGE
Chicago World Columbian Exposition 1893 City of urban planning Burnhem-Chicago Whole panel from Boston fantasy city , open, White City- Neoclassical architecture they were using steel frame not look progressive but it was classical identity Everything was symmetrical how the rest of country make develop Reading responses how is commerce controlled where it was less controlled Interior of Chicago Fair was kind of warehouse. Gilbert Reading Chicago World Fair Gilbert Reading Neil Harris Midway was about nationalism White City Building line of progress older set up fountain kind like dorm area It brought out the consumerism how they controlled or not controlled Midway natural disaster- you have to pay for this Saint Louis World Fair Philippines was new colony for the United States. Provide them (Philippines)Filipinos everything uncivilized vs civilized 1867
French Universal Exposition 1889 In the Greenhalgh’s reading at all the Expositions Universelles, Frenchness was to be seen as an essence cable of constantly producing cultural artifacts of the first rank. Music, Poetry, Painting, sculpture, architecture, ceramic, furniture, textiles, manufactured objects, graphics, fashion, food and drink, in fact every type of object carrying the least cultural significance was presented as being at its best in its French form. The main symbol of the world fair was the Eiffel Tower, which served as the entrance arch to the Fair. The 1889 fair was held on the Champ de Mars in Paris, which had been the site of the earlier Paris Universal Exhibition of 1867, and would also be the site of the 1900 exposition. Since the lifts had not been completed when the Exposition opened, the first visitors had to walk up to the second floor platform. After the Second World War nations increasingly refused o participate in events where opposing regimes were to be present. Equally, the events themselves became upon diplomatic neutrality leveled out the whole into anonymity. Also show simply highlighted the violent climax of the nationalism, which had grown within the exhibition tradition since 1851. The Exhibition organizers learned a great deal from such cultural forms, the entertainment areas of sites all over the world being punctuated with populist propaganda on the merits nation and empire. The Exposition of 1889 saw the most complete rendering so far of France as the supreme example of civilized humanity, leading the Official American Report to recognize art as French national characteristics. It was not only the French nation but also into the genetic make-up of French men. The effort to establish a national profile cost both dearly, as they used the exhibition medium to struggle for what they saw as a necessary supremacy. Everything came to a grand climax on the eve of the Second World War.
Columbian Exposition
James Gilbert, Perfect Cities: Chicago’s Utopias of 1893 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 88-103
In this elegant and sensitive look at the milieu of the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893, James Gilbert examines the three utopias that were designed to bring order to the chaos of urban life: The World's Fair itself, George Pullman's community for his workers, and Dwight Moody's evangelical crusade. Gilbert draws upon a rich selection of fiction, collective biography, architecture, photographs, and souvenir books to show how these experiments each acted as a middle-class prescription for coming to terms with the new cultural diversity and competition resulting from the disruptive forces of technological change, commercial enterprise, and pluralism. "Mr. Gilbert's splendid book opens the door on a conflicted past, and provides an indispensable perspective on the troubled and troubling struggle we face today between old and new, unity and diversity."--Alan Trachtenberg, New York Times " Perfect Cities is a remarkable account of a struggle for cultural definition. Chronicling the byplay between cultural homogeneity and heterogeneity, unity and diversity, James Gilbert not only throws light on Chicago's past but also provides insight that can be applied to the cultural debates of our own time."--Adria Bernardi, Chicago Tribune "What Gilbert has done is to enable the reader to experience the grand utopian visions of the times, yet at the same time see the cantankerous reality that made the visions impossible."--Henry Kisor, Chicago Sun-Times
In the 1890s the United States was in the middle of an unprecedented transformation. As the industrial revolution remade the economy, the effects on society were broad and far reaching. One of the most obvious changes was the growth of American cities – between 1870 and 1920, the nation's urban population exploded from less than 10 million to more than 54 million. The average worker, who saw his income and free time increase dramatically, began to look for new amusements. These changes, along with new emphasis on technological progress and the rise of consumerism, led to a revolution in American popular entertainment. The rise of vaudeville was one result. But it was the world’s fair that became the perfect vehicle for exposing Americans to the wonders of the modern world. Visitors to Chicago’s main exhibit, "The White City," were thrilled to glimpse a better world right around the corner, courtesy of the latest in human ingenuity and high culture.
If the "serious" exhibits were the meat and potatoes of the World's Fair, the Midway was pure confection. In 1876, the organizers of the Philadelphia fair, not wanting to detract from their educational mission, had banned lowbrow entertainment -- only to see a wildly successful "Shantytown" spring up right across the street. Fairgoers at the huge Paris Exposition of 1889, on the other hand, found light entertainment mixed freely with more substantial exhibits. The Midway was created by the organizers in Chicago as a compromise, a way to offer popular fare without tainting the serious stuff. This arrangement gave free rein to performers and the public alike, and resulted in something entirely new.
"Variety was the spice of show business and the right kind of amusements -- brief, light, and frivolous -- could be almost addictive," observed Nasaw. "Each amusement only whetted the appetite for more. Had any of the exhibits been entirely satisfying the chain would have been snapped. But that never happened." The balance between edification and pleasure was important, however. When Omaha businessmen kept their Midway open for a second year after the fair had closed, it was a financial disaster. It seemed the public felt guilty skipping the meal and indulging only in dessert.
The Midways were not fun for everyone, though. African-Americans, while free to come and go like anyone else, were made to feel unwelcome. Unlike the exhibits celebrating the achievements of other cultures, fake "African villages," according to Frederick Douglass, had a very different purpose: "to exhibit the Negro as a repulsive savage." At the Chicago fair, even Douglass’s effort to highlight the progress of African Americans since the abolition of slavery backfired, as organizers turned "Colored People’s Day" into a cruel joke by offering free watermelons to African American fairgoers. As examples like this show, the World’s Fairs were -- for better and for worse -- true expressions of their age.
"Variety was the spice of show business and the right kind of amusements -- brief, light, and frivolous -- could be almost addictive," observed Nasaw. "Each amusement only whetted the appetite for more. Had any of the exhibits been entirely satisfying the chain would have been snapped. But that never happened." The balance between edification and pleasure was important, however. When Omaha businessmen kept their Midway open for a second year after the fair had closed, it was a financial disaster. It seemed the public felt guilty skipping the meal and indulging only in dessert.
The Midways were not fun for everyone, though. African-Americans, while free to come and go like anyone else, were made to feel unwelcome. Unlike the exhibits celebrating the achievements of other cultures, fake "African villages," according to Frederick Douglass, had a very different purpose: "to exhibit the Negro as a repulsive savage." At the Chicago fair, even Douglass’s effort to highlight the progress of African Americans since the abolition of slavery backfired, as organizers turned "Colored People’s Day" into a cruel joke by offering free watermelons to African American fairgoers. As examples like this show, the World’s Fairs were -- for better and for worse -- true expressions of their age.
Neil Harris
For the line of investigation followed in this paper, the Midway Plaisance was much more than a counter melody intended to enhance the imperialistic and ethnocentric score of the Fair. With its “picturesque exotica” [17] the Midway was either an empowerment of the Fair’s illusive nature and a decisive force in marketing a modern imaginary of urban space and life through representation resulting from the Fair. I will support my argument with a brief description of the Midway and its peculiarities.
First of all, the Midway Plaisance of Chicago was the first modern International Expo in history with an explicit link to its roots in medieval and carnivalesque fairs. The organizers took some of the festive aspects of the previous world’s fair — in Paris in 1889 — and went a step further. They incorporated on the border of the fairground, but within the site, an avenue a mile in length “lined on both sides with so remarkable a collection of shows of one sort or another that one man could never hope to find them all in a lifetime were he compelled to search through the world for himself” [18].
This strip of land was composed of rationalized staging of entertainments, spectacles and simulations conceived and perceived as places of multi–sensual stimulation and enchantment. In the Midway you could find the representation of tribal life from the most exotic places from the Pacific to the Indian Oceans. You could walk through Algerian and Tunisian villages (a representation, a simulation) towards ‘Old Vienna’ and into a Chinese village or Turkish village. You could look at the most beautiful simulations made possible by the joint use of electricity, theatrical display and mechanical devices, such as the simulation of the Italian ‘Capri Grotto’, the Cyclorama of an Hawaiian volcano or the representation of ‘A day at the Alps’ inside the Electric Scenic Theatre, from the sunny morning through an afternoon thunderstorm and then into the silent night, with stars brooding over it all.
The Midway Plaisance was a controlled space of wandering and experiences that made possible a safe solicitation of the senses; a carnival freed from violence and the elements of uncertainty always present in the past. Technology and savagery, past and future, far and near, familiar and exotica were all mixed in an architectural, musical and cultural patchwork very close to postmodern taste. Elements from different epochs and distant countries were brought together in the same space and at the same time. Such time–space compression, together with the theatrical nature of the Fair, loosened the accent of reality and ignited the power of imagination by stimulating senses and emotions, being a first step towards the society as spectacle (Debord, 1967). The display of customs, traditions and civilizations, with their achievements or primitiveness became therefore an experience of divertissement and entered into the everyday life of the masses (Rydell, 1984; 1989). The Midway Plaisance was indeed a direct source for the development of theme parks and luna parks, such as Coney Island in New York (Kasson, 1978).
As a matter of fact, we can trace here the distant root of that mixture between spectacles and business that would become a must for contemporary “experience economy” (Pine and Gilmore, 1999; Ritzer, 2005). The first is a case strikingly similar to present–day example of mixture between spectacle and restoration, the “Hungarian Orpheum”: “The exhibit consists of a café and concert pavilion [...] with a covered garden on the roof. The theater is in the lower part, and concerts are given every half–hour. The performers are Hungarian artists, brought directly from Budapest, Hungary’s capital city. The native costumes and modes of life of the different nationalities which compose this empire are shown. The roof–garden is filled with chairs and tables where meals, lunches, etc., are served. The guests are waited upon by seventy–five Hungarian maidens, dressed in their rich national costumes; and at intervals Hazay Natzy’s famous Hungarian band discourses choice music. There is also a gipsy band under the leadership of Paul Olah.” [19] |
Manufacturers, too, displayed their new brands through spectacular and entertaining shows, even outside the Midway Plaisance. For example, within the Baker’s Cocoa and Chocolate Pavilion, breakfast cocoa was served by young maidens dressed in the costume of Liotard’s ‘La belle Chocolatiere’, chosen as the trademark logo of the brand few years before (Wade, 1893). Within the Agricultural Building, the American Cereal Company realized the panorama ‘The Procession of the Seasons’ which was painted by H. Bolton Jones and Francis C. Jones of New York and showed “in poetic art the story of the old and new way of Agriculture” [20], following the course of grain from seed to manufactured product, ready for breakfast. The Lever Brothers, British soap manufacturer, realized a reproduction of the Windsor Castle as the main attraction of its exhibit [21].
The autonomous works of young impresario Sol Bloom and the Harvard anthropologist Frederick Ward Putnam, who was the appointed supervisor of the anthropological expositions at the Fair, put the Midway Plaisance at the centre of the Fair, even if the intentions of the organizers were to keep it separated from the dignified and solemn lessons of the White City. The Midway indeed demonstrated how information, entertainment and spectacles could be joined together as a pleasurable public experience. Far from remaining a sideshow, it joined the White City in shaping the imaginary emerging from the experience of the Fair.
World’s Fair 3/11 World’s Columbia Exhibition: Peristyle New Jerusalem, Chicago Exhibition 1893 Aspirational point Urban space- vision of the city waterway Classicism Chicago Urbanism 1893 Idea of pleasure garden, it was not planned Art Gallery formed with permanent structure Daniel Burnham: East Coast feeling, “greatest meeting of artists since 15th C. (St.Gaudens) Innovator: George B. Post : Concerned with engineering early introducer of elevator into buildings * World building, early introduce of elevator into buildings * World building, early skyscraper in French Henry Van Brunt of Van Brunt & Howe : Electricity (Water of Electricity) * Francis D. Millet, director of decoration (Boston-born expat painter cOL. edmund Rice, Commandant of the Columbian Guard Charles Follen McKim of McKim, Meade and White (Agriculture) * Ernest R. Graham. Ast, Director of Works and Dion Geraldine, general supervisor of construction (note class differences in clothing and bearing) Chicago as the new city, building it up, lots of money and arch innovation city popped up overnight * the fair rises from the swamp * metaphor for Midwest, for America * master metaphor of civilizing the wilderness: order from chaos * (image recurs In 1939, fair rises from “valley of ashes”) * -underpins rhetoric of White City as the city upon hill (John Windthrop)
Idea of Urbanism: balanced, symmetry,axis, idealised Paris exposition, it was already city Fair into the city Midwest didn’t built up yet, Court of Honour civilisation The White City as city * with a city centre (Court of Honor): park ( Wooded Island and Lageoon) and red-flight district (Midway) * All relate to each-other spatially, and Hierarchically * Court of Honor positioned as apex of civilisation (original plan to limit entrance to RR depot, later scrapped, visitors, entered from Midway too - White City
Louisiana Exposition 1904
Like many other world’s fairs, the Exposition put people on display. In the case of the Philippine exhibit, the Exposition’s organizers wished to demonstrate the progress Americans had made in civilizing their new subjects. Instead of studying the model industrial schools or the latest Philippine products, visitors flocked to see the more entertaining and exotic “dog-eating,” “head-hunting” Igorots. This group of people made up a small proportion of the Filipinos, yet their lack of clothing and ‘heathen’ customs made their exhibits more titillating. Ironically, the Exposition also demonstrated that Americans were not willing to accept Filipinos even when they met American standards of civilization. When the American-trained Philippine Scouts were seen conversing and walking with white women, they were mobbed and forbidden from leaving the Philippine exhibit. Unfortunately, Filipinos were just one of several groups of people that were displayed in ways that revealed more about the racism of the time than the culture of the people.
However, the people on display were just a part of an otherwise exciting world’s fair. Theodore Roosevelt was one of many visitors who found the Exposition thrilling. On opening day, Roosevelt pressed a golden telegraphic key in the White House to officially open the fair. However, Roosevelt did not attend the fair until after the November elections, as he did not wish to be accused of using the fair for political purposes. When he finally came on November 26, 1904, Roosevelt was described as “a ‘live exhibit’ of strenuous life and enjoyment; always in motion; noting everything in sight; breaking away from his party here and there for a special scrutiny of this or that; bubbling over with intelligent and admiring comments...” No one documented whether Roosevelt came across his North Dakota Maltese Cross Cabin or saw the two Roosevelt butter sculptures – one of him dressed as a cowboy on a horse and the other a formal bust sculpture. Everything he did see pleased him so much that he declared the fair to be the “greatest Exposition of the kind that we have ever seen in recorded history.”
