Cooperative Living Northern Virginia Electric • June 2016 • Chicago’s 1893 World’s Fair Amazed Visitors

It’s June and King’s Dominion, Busch Gardens, and Disney World beckon. Nothing like them existed before 1890. Most cities and towns were dark, dirty, dangerous and rarely amusing. The lightbulb, electric generation, and creative minds started changing all that in 1893.

The world had never seen anything like it. For six months in 1893, 27.5 million people — almost half the U.S. population — visited the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. The fair commemorated Christopher Columbus’ discovery of America in 1492, but it exhibited a world far more amazing than Columbus ever imagined.

"Chicago spirit” rebuilt the Illinois city after the Great Fire of 1871 had destroyed much of it. By 1889 Chicago had become the second-largest U.S. city next to New York. Yet despite increasing commerce and “skyscrapers” — made possible with the 1889 electric elevator — Chicago was a city of coal-burning soot, street garbage, flies, fatal fires, stockyard slaughter, and murder. According to Erik Larson, author of The Devil in the White City, “Chicago awed visitors and terrified them.”

Also in 1889, France opened the Exposition Universelle. At the fair’s heart stood a 1,000-foot tower — the highest man-made structure on earth. It visually proclaimed France’s engineering dominance. America’s growing patriotism wouldn’t have it. They set out to “out-Eiffel” Alexandre Gustave Eiffel’s magnificent tower at an even-grander exposition. The U.S. Congress selected Chicago to do it.

In 1890, President Benjamin Harrison set Oct. 12, 1892 — the 400th anniversary of Columbus’ arrival — as Dedication Day. The exposition would open the following May to give Chicago more time.

Daniel Burnham, chosen as lead architect, had the daunting challenge of building a spectacular city of 1,000 buildings on one square mile in just two years. He convinced some of the nation’s greatest architects to join the effort. New York City Central Park landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted finally agreed to turn a beach of sand and stagnant pools along Lake Michigan into an elaborate park of lagoons and gardens.

To out-do France’s Eiffel Tower, Burnham urged fair engineers to create something “novel, daring and unique.” Burnham received plans from a young Pittsburgh steel engineer. Burnham rejected the “outlandish and dangerous” idea of attaching 36 Pullman-like cars to an enormous vertically revolving wheel to rotate more than 2,100 people. But with time running out, the planning committee gave George Washington Gale Ferris the go-ahead to construct his wheel.

Through horrible weather, fatal construction accidents, illnesses, vociferous debates, workers’ strikes and delays, the exposition slowly came together. The fairgrounds — with grand buildings adorned with ancient Greek motifs and domes glowing in Olmsted’s park — in no way looked like the country fair naysayers had predicted. To create design uniformity, Burnham had all of the buildings painted white. The head painter invented spray painting to save dwindling time.

After developing his 1879 lightbulb, Thomas Edison opened the nation’s first electric-generation station in 1882. Its direct current became the nation’s standard even though operators could not convert DC’s voltage easily to transmit it over long distances. Nikola Tesla, another inventor, engineered alternating current for easier voltage changes. Edison began fighting the War of the Currents by saying AC was much more dangerous.

The dispute culminated at Chicago’s fair. The General Electric Company, which had bought Edison’s company, put in a high bid to illuminate the exposition with DC power. George Westinghouse came in with a lower bid using Tesla’s AC technology. Westinghouse got the contract and according to Larson, “helped change the history of electricity.”

Rain poured on the unfinished fair for two weeks before opening day. All through the rainy night on April 30, 10,000 workers set-up displays, painted, planted sod and pansies, removed debris, and scrubbed everything.

The next morning, a procession led by President Grover Cleveland passed international villages, the hot-air balloon park, and Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show featuring sharpshooter Annie Oakley.

Cleveland told the 200,000 visitors, “The machinery that gives light to this vast Exposition is set in motion. So at the same instant let our hopes and aspirations awaken forces which in all time to come shall influence the welfare, the dignity, and the freedom of mankind.”

The rain stopped just as an enormous American flag and banners unfurled. A water fountain shot 100 feet into the air as 200 white doves flew skyward. A ship on Lake Michigan fired its guns. In awe, visitors spontaneously sang “My Country ’Tis of Thee.”

Unlike Chicago’s dark city, the White City provided pure water, clean public bathrooms, ambulance service, and amazing marvels. Visitors heard live music in New York through a telephone and watched Edison’s moving pictures. Children discovered “Cracker Jacks.” Women couldn’t believe a new device called a zipper and the all-electric kitchen, which included a dishwasher.

Electric white and colored lights dazzled the nights. Larson says, “The lamps that laced every building and walkway produced the most elaborate demonstration of electric illumination ever attempted and the first large-scale test of alternating current. The fair alone consumed three times as much electricity as the entire city of Chicago. These were important engineering milestones, but what visitors adored was the sheer beauty of seeing so many lights ignited in one place, at one time.”

A Polish girl who visited the fair said, “As the light was fading in the sky, millions of lights were suddenly flashed on. … Having seen nothing but kerosene lamps for illumination, this was like getting a sudden vision of Heaven.” When told the lights came on by switch, she asked, “Without matches?”

Ferris dedicated his 2.6 million-pound wheel on June 21. At 264 feet, it stood higher than Chicago’s tallest skyscraper and New York’s Statue of Liberty. It safely gave 2.4 million people a ride that took their breath away. At night, it sparkled with 3,000 electric lights. American National Biography Online says the wheel was, “the first example of technology being harnessed purely as a pleasure machine, and it captured the imagination of a nation.”

The Windy City’s fair closed on Oct. 31, but it influenced creators who followed Burnham’s motto: “Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men’s blood.” Frank Baum wrote The Wonderful Wizard of Oz after seeing the fair. Elias Disney, a fair contractor, described it to his son Walt. Jeff Dixon wrote in “The Influence of Walt Disney’s Father,” fair stories “shaped Walt’s thinking and created within him ideas and hopes that one day would become something no one had ever seen before.”

After the fair, Burnham transformed many cities with gorgeous architecture, parks, and electric lights. As chairman of the Senate Park Commission, he designed Washington, D.C.’s Union Station and the unobstructed green view from Capitol Hill to the Lincoln Memorial.

When you enjoy amusement parks this summer, thank American ingenuity and electricity for making your visit amazing.