Sorry, I don’t know if this is Cafe Society or GQ. I think it’s GQ because it deals with factual questions about Chicago. Mods feel free to move.
I’m at lunch today with my coworker and she started talking about this book, Devil in the White City. She wants to know where the White City is in Chicago. I grew up and went to school in Chicago and don’t recall any “White City.” What does it look like now? Is it the south side? I was in Hyde Park, so that’s as far south as I went.
However, her question really centered around the Ferris Wheel.
In the book, she says, Ferris wanted to outdo the Eiffel Tower. So, he came up with the Ferris Wheel. I’m a huge fan of the Ferris Wheel, and I think they’re romantic. However, this Ferris Wheel has like 35 cars, and each car holds like 100 people (or something to that effect, it was a ridiculous number). Is this true? What did this behmoth look like? Where is it now? I can’t imagine that something that big would be discarded.
The “White City”, like the Ferris Wheel, was built for the 1833 World’s Fair. I believe the name originated from the brilliant white limestone used in the construction of the exhibit buildings that comprised “White City”. Only one of the White City buildings exists in the same place it had in 1833, it originally held agricultural exhibits but you’ll know it as the Museum of Sceince & Industry.
Google wasn’t my friend today. I think it’s because I acutally had a lot of work to do today and wasn’t really concentrating on my search terms.
I did find this site which says that it was destroyed because a deal to bring to Coney Island fell through. That’s kind of sad, I think. If I were alive at the time, I think I would have much rather liked the Ferris Wheel over the Eiffel Tower – which I liked more than I thought I would when I finally did see it. I’m surprised that they tore down the White City and moved the Ferris Wheel and eventually destroyed it. It would’ve made a cool landmark like Buckingham Fountain.
The book Devil in the White City is, surprisingly, much more interesting for the White City bits than for the Devil bits (which are IMO overwrought and silly–but this is GQ, so I’ll say no more on that). If I recall correctly, the white city was built very quickly and was a very ambitious project; as such, it was not built to last, but rather was built to last for the World’s Fair. Its destruction was inevitable, by the elements if nothing else.
The Ferris Wheel, though–THAT loss was pretty awful.
Note that Lute got the date wrong: it was built for the 1893 World’s Fair, not 1833.
The pond in Jackson Park behind the museum is also a remnant of the fair. The Wooded Island is there, and if I recall hearing correctly, is the subject of someone’s efforts to restore it to it’s original luster.
If you’ve ever been to the University of Chicago (A GORGEOUS urban campus…ok, very nice), you’ll be familiar with the Midway Plaisance, which was also built for the fair. In fact, it is in the Midway that the Ferris Wheel stood I believe.
World’s Fairs are designed to be disposable. The buildings were usually made from cheap materials coated with plaster to make them seem grander than they were. There were major World’s Fairs every few years, designed basically as tourist attractions to show off the city and the technological progress that the country had made. But they were temporary affairs, put up very quickly and then torn down again afterward. Only a very few buildings were ever designed to be permanent.
The Chicago World’s Fair was put up during one of the worst recessions in our history. After the Fair, there was simply no money to do anything more with the buildings or to run something as expensive as the Ferris Wheel. Many people wanted to keep the White City as housing for the homeless, since 10% of the population was on the verge of starvation, but it in fact burned down in January 1894.
Just to agree with you; one of the reasons that I read the book was because it concerned the deeds of one of America’s first documented serial killers (which Cecil discusses here). By the end of the book, that part of the book had me pretty well disgusted, but the parts about the effort to construct the Fair were truly inspiring. I think the author makes a strong case that it was the Fair that helped to put Chicago on the map as a city of the world.
It didn’t open to the public until 1893, as you say. Sadly, it was supposed to open in 1892 to celebrate 400 years after Columbus, and was called the “Columbian Exposition”.
