The World's Columbian Exposition Travel tips for Chicago from 1893

[mucifer]

Last edited Thu Nov 21, 2019, 10:01 AM - Edit history (1)

Really interesting article in The Reader:

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If you could go back in time to see the World's Columbian Exposition, how would you prepare for life in Chicago? Here are some suggestions drawn from travel guidebooks for Chicago and from advice printed in newspapers from around the world.

According to the 1890 census, Chicago was 98.6 percent white. (For contrast, according to 2018 census figures, Chicago is currently 32.7 percent white.) The English-German Guide of the City of Chicago and the World's Columbian Exposition, a guidebook targeted at tourists from Germany, noted that visitors might get by in Chicago speaking only German. Nonwhites might not face the same rigid segregation as in the American south, but private businesses such as hotels and restaurants could find excuses to turn customers away. "No sensible white person feels aggrieved when he rides from Van Buren street to the Fair grounds . . . on a seat shared by a decent colored person," explained one Chicago newspaper in an editorial against a vaudeville theater that had required Blacks to sit in a "colored gallery," which cost three times more than general admission. In her autobiography, Ida B. Wells recalled going to lunch with Frederick Douglass near the close of the fair. She brought up a nice restaurant across the street, one that didn't serve Blacks. Douglass grasped her arm and said, "Come, let's go there." The waiters at the Boston Oyster House seemed "paralyzed." The owner of the restaurant recognized Douglass and greeted him warmly. This was enough to get service.

A correspondent from the Pall Mall Gazette told its London readers to bring galoshes. The English-German Guide concurred: Chicago streets "are dirty to an extent incomprehensible to Europeans." Street fashion in this part of America, the guidebook maintained, was sehr einfach: very simple. "Jewelry and loud clothing ought to be avoided, the attention of dangerous characters being attracted by them."

Though costs decreased over the summer, it was still easy to blow a fortune at the Columbian Exposition itself. The Santa Fe Daily New Mexican reported one visitor's deluxe day trip. Paying to be wheeled around the fairgrounds in rolling chairs and to navigate lagoon waters in gondolas, the traveler "bought catalogues and guidebooks, saw all the wonders of the Midway Pleasance [sic], had lunch and dinner at the swell cafes and brought innumerable souvenirs." He shelled out $30 for the day—a total that when adjusted for inflation is about $855.

https://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/travel-tips-worlds-columbian-exposition-1893/Content?oid=75678862

Really fascinating article. Yes, those photos were of Chicago in 1893. They were temporary structures near the University of Chicago. The only structure that still exists is our Museum of Science and Industry: http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/859.html

[hedda_foil]

1. Thanks for a wonderful piece, mucifer. A minor correction though.

The Museum of Science and Industry is the only remaining building from the World's Columbian Exposition. The Field is from the Century of Progress Exposition in 1933-'34.

[mucifer]

2. Oy vey. Thanks! I edited my post

[tikka]

3. Murals from the exposition can be seen in a small town in Kansas

In Wamego, Kansas, about 100 miles west of Kansas City, several murals are on display in the aptly named Columbian Theater. The murals hung there for years in the no longer used second floor theater area. Several years ago the building was refurbished and the murals restored.