Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, May 2, 1993 TAG: 9305020034
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: From The Associated Press and Knight-Ridder/Tribune
DATELINE: CHICAGO LENGTH: Long
The nickname, the ride and the belly dance all rode into popular culture at the World's Columbian Exposition, the "illustrated encyclopedia of civilization" that rose a century ago from a swampland on the city's South Side.
A century later, the cultural icons it introduced still flavor American life.
"It really was responsible for fomenting a commercial culture through its corporate displays," said historian Robert W. Rydell of Montana State University, who studies world's fairs.
The fair opened May 1, 1893, to celebrate - a year late - the 400th anniversary of Columbus' first voyage to the New World and the friendship of the United States and Spain. President Grover Cleveland himself tapped the telegraph key that turned on the lights.
An exhibit at the Chicago Historical Society attempts to re-create the grandeur of the exposition with a display of artifacts and photographs.
The exhibit, which opened a 14-month run Saturday, is titled "Grand Illusions: Chicago's World's Fair of 1893."
"With the Chicago fair, the U.S. was ready to show that it was going to play a major role in the world. The Japanese also used the occasion to say, `We're here,' " said architectural historian Wim de Wit, curator of the exhibit.
The fair had a mass audience even before it opened. Some 100,000 people attended a dedication of the uncompleted fairgrounds on Oct. 12, 1892, which became Columbus Day.
Millions of young people participated in absentia, thanks to Boston socialist Francis J. Bellamy's campaign to make the date a national holiday. Bellamy wrote and printed in a youth magazine a "Columbian" ceremony that included the Pledge of Allegiance.
Historians estimate 5 percent to 10 percent of the U.S. population attended the exposition. In its six-month run, there were 21.5 million admissions at 50 cents each.
Visitors strolled through 666 acres designed by architect Daniel Burnham to popularize his "city beautiful." The dazzling buildings of the "White City" were designed by architects including Stanford White and Louis Sullivan.
According to de Wit, the ornate buildings, which looked like they were made of white marble, "really were made out of `staff,' a mixture of plaster and horsehair."
The Midway Plaisance had a Venetian canal as its central mall, and the first picture postcards sold in America were views of the fair taken by its official photographer.
The fair's co-host, Spain, sent replicas of the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria to commemorate Columbus' voyage.
For food, the "real, live" Aunt Jemima cooked flapjacks next to a flour barrel to promote the first successful packaged pancake mix. She was Nancy Green, a former slave who became rich and famous playing the promotional role.
But black fairgoers were advised to patronize only the restaurant at the Haitian pavilion.
For drink, Dutch rulers of present-day Indonesia imported an entire Javanese village to promote their tea.
The hot air generated by Illinois politicians lobbying Congress for the fair left Chicago a legacy. When New York newspapers lobbied against the boasts of "The Windy City," Chicago got an enduring nickname.
The Midway's lead "Cairo" dancer, "Little Egypt," was the real thing. Born Fahreda Mahzar in Damascus, she came to Chicago with a troupe of Syrian dancers and musicians. She did her "hootchykootchy" dance with a lit candelabra on her head and was the first belly dancer to capture the American imagination.
The other "must-see" was an afterthought, the huge wheel built by Galesburg, Ill., engineer G.W. Gale Ferris. He dreamed up the idea for the wheel that bears his name after plans to duplicate the Eiffel Tower, erected in Paris only a few years earlier, fell through.
The original Ferris wheel was the largest ever built - 250 feet in diameter, with 36 enclosed cars that each carried 60 passengers.
Neither the wheel nor the White City survived after the fair closed Oct. 31, 1893. During the depression winter of 1893-4, homeless people began squatting in the abandoned buildings and fires began breaking out. Most of the buildings burned to the ground during an 1894 clash between federal troops and strikers from the Pullman Co.
The fair's one permanent building, the Palace of Fine Arts, survives as Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry. But the legacy of the six-month event extends throughout Chicago, visible in such glistening white structures as the Wrigley Building and more than 20 miles of lakefront parks.
"Americans realized when they came to the World's Fair that if you planned ahead, a city could be a beautiful thing," said Sally Chappell, professor of art history at De Paul University, in Chicago. "That's where we get the qualities that make Chicago a unique and beautiful city."
Among the ironies of the fair:
Mayor Carter Harrison became known as the "World's Fair Mayor" after presiding over the exposition. Two days before the fair closed, Harrison was assassinated by a disgruntled city employee.
The fair sought to portray the limitless advance of human progress, but was held in a year in which the American economy plunged into depression and beggars walked the streets.
Among the fair's carpenters was Elias Disney, whose son Walt was born in a simple frame cottage in Chicago in 1901. The father told the son about the wonders of the Columbian Exposition and the son, some have suggested, was inspired to build a fantasy city of his own in Southern California.
Even if the tale isn't true, the fair was in some respects the Disneyland of its day, an urban wonderland whose organizers craftily controlled its every image. They hired an official photographer, Charles Dudley Arnold, to document the wonders of the White City.
The impact of these images - and the shared experience of the visitors - inspired popular support for the "City Beautiful" movement of grandly scaled municipal planning. Among its legacies are the barrel-vaulted Union Station in Washington, D.C., and San Francisco's domed City Hall.
by CNB