MSI was reconstructed to look like the original Palace of Fine Arts, but there’s a building built for the fair that was meant to last because Bertha Honoré Palmer had a purpose for it. It was built where planners originally thought the Fair would go. There were several problems with the location, but the biggest was the Army Corps of Engineers, which wouldn’t allow legal landfill near the river. (The Streeterville landfill you can see was illegal.) The fair organizers continued building the structure they had already started and held the congresses there. These were week long gatherings of authorities and experts around a single topic like Religion or Education. Over 750,000 people attended the lectures and in their various fields the Congresses were wildly influential, launching thinking into the 20th Century.
You can see several reasons it was a bad location but one was the coal soot over everything. Brand new and the building is already covered with grime. Chicago burned Illinois coal, which covered everything in black grit. That was another reason the gleaming white paint of the fair amazed people into calling it White City. Chicago was the Black City and the University, which opened in 1892, started calling itself the Grey City because it was in limestone. So next time you’re near the Art Institute say hi to the fair.
No comments:
Post a Comment