The Norway Building

 

One of the things that’s interested me is how attached other nations are to their history at the Columbian Exposition. I thought it might be special to the Japanese because it was their time to step out onto the world stage. They have come back to finance the garden many times over in honor of their pavilion, but it’s also true of others, including the Norwegians. The Norwegian pavilion is one of the few structures at the fair that survives in its original condition, though it’s wandered quite a bit.

 

The country, state, and territory buildings were all arranged around the Fine Arts/MSI area. Because some of these were real buildings and needed the most time to build, they were mapped out in the one section of Jackson Park that had already been developed as dry land—basically from 56th to 58th. 

 

From the new website for the building. see link below

 

Countries and states also applied for exhibit space in the various themed buildings. Those were where the real promotion and display of the home culture were done. The outsides of the separate buildings were often seen as the important showpiece and the interior had small exhibits. Mostly this one served as offices for the various Norwegians working at the fair in various capacities. In this case, they built a stunning medieval stave church. It was built first near Trondheim, Norway, then disassembled and shipped to the fairgrounds, where it was reassembled.

 

1893. University of Chicago Photographic Archive [apf3-00040r], Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library

After the close of the Fair, the building was purchased by Norwegian-American Cornelius Kinsland Billings, president of People’s Gas of Chicago. He had it disassembled and shipped to his estate at Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. That estate then was sold to William Wrigley Jr., who painted it bright yellow and used the building as a private movie theater. In 1935, a Norwegian-American, Isak Dahle, disassembled the building and moved it to Blue Mounds, Wisconsin. There it became a mini-Norwegian museum with other buildings and small exhibits about Norwegians in America. Several generations later, people rarely visited small museums. The cost of maintaining it wasn’t covered and damage was taking its toll.

 

All this time, the Norwegians hadn’t forgotten. Over the decades, royalty had visited, future King Olave in 1939 and future King Harald in 1965. Olav Sigurd Kvaale, the grandson of Peder Kvaale, one of the original woodworkers, came to visit, saw that it was in need of rescue and raised the money to buy it and bring it home—raising both private and government funds. 

 

The Norwegian workmen disassembling it in 2015. photo from the Chicago Tribune

Not only was it their showpiece from 1893, but it was an authentic example of a stave church, which were becoming rare in Norway. So, it’s now in its new home in Orkdal, Norway. 

 

As part of the celebration of bringing the pavilion home, the Norwegians erected a plaque where it had stood in Jackson Park in August 2018. They contacted Rahm Emanuel—and though the Park District has rules about markers in the park (have to be low subtle rocks), this is a tall metal plaque on the north side of Science Drive as you pull off Lake Shore Drive into the MSI surface parking lot.

 

c. plmorse

 

I checked out the Norwegian site advertising the rehabbed pavilion and found out something. Isak Dahle was gay. When he reassembled the pavilion in the 1930s, he rearranged the heads so that bearded kings were next to bearded kings and queens were next to queens—same sex royal couples. When the Norwegians reassembled it for the last time, they decided to keep his arrangement to show that the “Norway Building welcomes all, regardless of sexual preference, race, or faith.” The first wedding held in the rebuilt building was a gay couple.

 

And here it is, reassembled in all it's glory. https://www.thamspaviljongen.no/norway-building-from-1893/

 

I relied a lot on a great website with more detail: https://worldsfairchicago1893.com/.../the-long-journey.../