Midway Plaisance
The Midway first came to being during the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago as a bit of an accident. The world's fair scheduled for 1892 was pushed towards a higher standard than most others. The successes of the 1876 Philadelphia and 1889 Paris fairs drove the Chicago planners to produce something even greater. As stated by Richard Wilson, the Paris fair especially hit home for the Americans. The sheer magnificence of the buildings and exhibits made the United States look very backward indeed. While France and the rest of the Old World countries held their own with remarkable advances in art, architecture, and science, the U.S. appeared to be falling behind. America's relatively inferior showings didn't help to shake this harsh image. The U.S. was desperate for a new self-image. It needed an opportunity to establish itself as the superpower it felt it deserved to be. The Columbian Exposition gave the U.S. this chance. Fair organizers planned the fair on a grand scale. They gravitated towards a solemn Neo-Classical style, as exemplified in the all-white Court of Honor, a style which represented order, tradition, purity, and grandeur -- all the things that America was trying to display.
However, this new classical character impressed upon the fair's major buildings produced a conflict with a group of people that had already laid claim to the fair: the members of the entertainment industry. Even before the formal announcement of the Fair in 1890, requests for space from all sorts of vendors, musical and circus troupes, and restaurateurs. Amusement vendors had been set up at previous expositions, usually right outside the fairgrounds. There, they not only attracted more fairgoers than the regular exhibits...
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...ighted crowds at Montreal in 1967. This endurance of the idea of the Midway is a testament to its charisma, its power, and the high place amusement holds in the eye of society.
Bibliography
Richard Wilson, "Challenge and Response: Americans and the Architecture of the 1889 Exhibition," in Annette Blaugrund (ed.) Paris 1889. American Artists at the Universal Exposition, Philadelphia: Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, 1989, 93-110.
Findling, John E. Historical Dictionary of World's Fairs and Expositions: 1851-1988. New York: Greenwood Press, 1990.
Meehan, Patrick. "The Big Wheel." Chicago's Great Ferris Wheel of 1893.
Rydell, Robert W. Fair America: World's Fairs in the United States. Washington D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2000.
Keefe, John Webster. Libbey Glass: A Tradition of 150 Years: 1918-1968. Toledo, Ohio: Toledo Museum of Art, 1968.
The Chicago World's Fair of 1893 changed America in enormous ways. Probably the most prominent being that it directly changed America's and the world's perception of America and our capabilities. Not only was it the first in America, but the Chicago World's Fair propelled America...
One story describes the planning of the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair that had been proposed to celebrate the four hundred years since Columbus landed in America. The idea didn’t get much attention until a year earlier, when Paris held a world fair and unveiled the Eiffel Tower. Not to be outdone, America decided now it was a matter of who would hold a fair that would put France’s fair to shame. There was a dilemma of where the fair would be built New York or Chicago, but votes were tallied up and the majority of the vote was Chicago. Among the many architects in Chicago, the main job of the designing the fair was given to Daniel H. Burnham. He needed a companion to help him with the design and other features of the fair, so he chose John Root, a very close friend of his and former associate. Because of the amount of time it took to decide where to build the fair, The White City was believed to be impossible to construct because of time con...
From first impression, Burnham found that Chicago had a murky factorial image lined with a “fantastic stink that lingered in the vicinity of Union Stock yards” (41). The dreadful surface that Chicago was maintaining allowed Burnham to be determined to collaborate and recreate its image. His efforts would also make a reputational comeback for America’s poor representation in the Exposition Universelle (15). One major feature that transformed public opinion of the state was to illuminate the entire fair with clean white buildings that outlined the goodness of the area (252). Eye-catching whiteness contradicted the presumed dirtiness of the town. Making a contradiction from what was assumed of the city would allow the fair to generate a much bigger transformation. The lights also gave the fair a unique, whimsical edge. “The lamps that laced every building and walkway produced the most elaborate demonstration of electric illumination ever attempted”, incorporating new technology in a grand-scale way merely to keep the theme of brightness ongoing throughout each day and night (254). Most importantly, it displayed the town’s potential to become a thriving and respected city. The theme of whiteness interlaced with the neoclassical outline in The World Fair’s de...
The World’s Fair of 1893 was set to commemorate the 400th year anniversary of Columbus’ voyage to America. When the top leaders in the US heard about the opportunity of hosting the fair, they quickly showed their interest. The main cities that showed interest were New York,...
William H. Thompson, the chairman for the fair's committee on grounds and buildings, established a thirteen-member team to arrange the fairgrounds. Gilbert was assigned to this commission and served as chairman of the committee that devised the site plan. He had a unique knowledge of the grounds as he had recently studied the adjoining grounds for the competition to design nearby Washington University.
Kennedy, David, Cohen, Lizabeth and Bailey, Thomas. “The American Pageant Volume II: Since 1865.” Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2006.
Greenhalgh, Paul. "Art, politics and society at the Franco-British Exhibition of 1908." Art History 1985 Dec., v.8, no.4, p.434-452
Papanicolaou, Linda Morey. “Stained Glass from the Cathedral of Tours: The Impact of the Sainte-Chapelle in the 1240’s.” Metropolitan Museum Journal, Vol. 15, (1980): pp. 53-66. Print.
The viewbook was compiled by the Architectural Commission for the fair, with the text by Allen D. Albert, an honorary secretary, and forward by Rufus C. Dawes, the president. The book, approximately nine by twelve inches, and consisting of 64 pages of vibrant images of the fair, depicts the major buildings, exhibits and attractions. These images are mostly watercolors, sometimes enhanced photographs or cartoons. Th...
Of course, there are the classic reasons for going to the Fair: the dozens of rides and attractions along the mile-long midway; the incredible variety of food and drink available; the many hands-on livestock exhibits; the opportunity to make hundreds of little goldfish paranoid by hurling plastic projectiles into their bowls; and, of course, the wide variety of special events. If you've been to the Fair before and are reading this article anyway, you may as well keep reading to see what's new.
In the year 1921, Conrad Eckhold, the owner of Atlantic City’s Monticello Hotel was looking for a way to keep tourists in town past Labor Day. After discussing the tourist problem with other Atlantic City business owners, the idea of a “Fall Frolic” was created. The Fall Frolic included a two-day competition to be called “Atlantic City’s Inter-City Beauty Pageant”, in years after it would be known as the “Miss America Pageant” (Miss America, 2/20/2011).
world at the fair, and remained on the grounds until 1895. It wasn’t all dark
“The children’s responsibility is to help promote the fair,” Wilson said. “The exhibit building is where people enter crafts, pictures, photos, decorated cakes, jellies and jams, just like an old county fair.”
Although the Chicago World’s fair of 1893 only lasted 6 months, it had an enormous impact on the city of Chicago, its people, and indeed the entire country. Up until that point in its history, the US had done nothing on the scale of the world’s fair, and was regarded as a country of barbarians and cowboys by much of the world, especially Old Europe. The fair was a perfect way for the US to disprove this. In building the fair, they would be placed in direct competition with France, who had built a magnificent fair only a few years before. If Chicago could at least build a fair on par with the Paris fair, it would prove to the world that the US was a cultural, military and political force to be reckoned with. Because of the fair’s gigantic scale, it became a microcosm of the conflicts and the tenor of the times. In effect, the fair was the turning point between the old Victorian days and the modern era, technologically, culturally, politically, and in the hearts of the people of the US and the world.
Everyone has been to a state or county fair to enjoy the different roller coasters, the greasy butterfly chips or elephant ears, visiting the animals, only to leave that night with ringing ears from all the excitement. Of course I love all the greasy food, my fair favorite is onion rings and a polish sausage from the Richmond Family Red Barn. Nevertheless, I do enjoy a day where I can relax on the alien spaceship where it travels so fast you can climb up the wall like Spiderman. However, I digress fair is full of fun and excitement and often just a one day excursion, but for me I call the Armada Fair my home.