Search results
The World's Columbian Exposition, also known as the Chicago World's Fair, was a world's fair held in Chicago from May 5 to October 31, 1893, to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's arrival in the New World in 1492.
May 24, 2024 · World’s Columbian Exposition, fair held in 1893 in Chicago, Illinois, to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s voyage to America. The chief planner was the Chicago architect Daniel H. Burnham. The classical facades of the fair’s ‘White City’ were electrically lighted at night.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
America hosted the World's Fair of 1893 as a celebration of Columbus' voyage to the continent four hundred (and one) years earlier. Chicago beat out New York, St. Louis and Washington,...
- American Experience
- Palace of Fine Arts
- Wooded Island
- A Ticket Booth
- Statue of The Republic
- Other Sites of Note
While the other major buildings of the White City were torn down, this Beaux Arts domed building still stands. Today, it’s home to the Museum of Science and Industry at 5700 S. Lake Shore Dr.
Famed landscape architect Frederick Law Olmstead designed this island in the center of the fair. It was intended to offer a quiet alternative to the crowds in the buildings around it. After the fair closed, the island became overgrown even as Jackson Park sprung up around it. In recent decades, the city has worked to clean up the island, completing...
Otherwise overshadowed by massive and ornate exhibition halls, a tiny ticket booth from the World’s Fair was saved in the early 20th century by Nathan Moore, who moved it to what’s today known as the Hills-DeCaro House at 313 Forest Ave. in Oak Park to be used as a children’s playhouse. It still sits in the yard of the privately owned Frank Lloyd W...
The original 65-foot-tall sculpture that served as a symbol of the fair no longer remains, but there’s a 24-foot-tall bronze replica at Hayes and Richards drives in Jackson Park.
The world’s first Ferris wheel was unveiled at the fair on the Midway Plaisance and stood 264 feet. It was moved to Clark and Wrightwood in Lincoln Park before being moved to St. Louis for the 1904 World’s Fair. Today, the Midway Plaisance ice rink sits where that first Ferris wheel once stood. Another site synonymous with the 1893 World’s Fair — e...
- Tanveer Ali
- Digital Media Specialist
(May 1, 1893–October 30, 1893.) Map of Fairgrounds, 1893. Organized to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Columbus's landfall in the New World, the World's Columbian Exposition became a defining moment in Chicago's history and the history of the United States as a whole.
- World's Columbian Exposition
The World's Columbian Exposition of 1893 attracted more than 20 million visitors to Chicago, as well as hundreds of dignitaries and representatives from nations across the globe. For many of these observers, the Fair reflected what they believed to be a new era in Chicago.
The 1893 World's Columbian Exposition introduced millions of Americans to many performers and forms of music. The cumulative influence is hard to assess, but it can be found throughout the nation's musical life.
