Tags
chicago architecture, Columbian Exposition, Concession Stand, Daniel Burnham, Frank Lloyd Wright, Oak Park, Ticket Booth, White City, World's Fair
When I go to work early in the morning and walk to the L, only a brisk 5 minute walk away, I go through the parking lot going south. As I leave the property, at the very end of lot, there’s a shed. A rickety old building covered with a parking spot number and shuttered with plywood. I heard rumor once that it was a train depot for the nearby train tracks, but I didn’t think much of it. One day I started thinking about a ticket booth from the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in the yard of the Hills DeCaro House, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright on Forest Ave nearby. Today this relic is beautifully restored, but originally, it was purchased by Nathan Moore for his children to use a play house sometime after the fair ended. I ended up on a webpage that not only told me the story of the ticket booth, but the mention of nearby cousin to that Columbian Exposition survivor right in my own back yard.
My guilty pleasure of diet soda apparently was introduced at the World’s Fair of 1893, right here in Chicago. Learning about the importance of the fair was inspired by my new knowledge of the “shed.” Even though a side by side comparison of a photo from the fair and the building today is pretty uncanny, there isn’t any documentation or knowledge of the true origins of the stand in the back of my building. The World’s Fair gave Chicago the nickname of the White City and inspired generations young and old from all across country and the world.
L. Frank Baum visited the White City in 1893, which inspired the great Emerald City from his classic story of the Wizard of Oz. The story of Oz is a story so familiar to popular culture it would be unheard of to find someone who hasn’t the referenced the yellow brick road and hummed “…We’re off to see the Wizard…” It must have been a magical experience to visit a city that only 22 years earlier was devastated by the Great Chicago Fire, but the entire city rose from these ashes like phoenix. Over the course of three years Daniel H. Burnham lead construction of nearly 150 buildings on top of what they called “Chicago Gumbo Soil.” To make all of these building consistent looking, a white wash was sprayed all over the grounds. Combined with the modern electric lights and gas lamps, the fair would have glowed.
Today, there’s nothing like this city that was. Traces of the fair are scattered all over the city. The Fair was only meant to be a temporary exposition, so most of it did not last long after 1893. Hidden Chicago with Geoffrey Baer explores the city as he finds Fair artifacts, including my building’s very own Concession Stand. Skip to the last segment to see all these hidden treasures. The Museum of Science and Industry is the only full building left, originally the Fine Arts Building, it was built sturdier to protect the priceless art and artifacts displayed inside. This building is magnificent in size, the presence of this building times 150 more coupled with the all the new things being presented there, it must have been an overwhelming experience. Even though the fair is long gone, it still surrounds us and influences culture generations later.