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The Duchess, the Devil, the Innkeeper’s Wife

14 Monday Aug 2017

Posted by M.K.E. in Uncategorized

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1893 columbian exposition, 1893 world's fair, Bertha Palmer, Carter Harrison, chicago, Columbus, Devil in the White City, Frank Geyer, H.H. Holmes, Infanta Eulalia, Potter Palmer

May 1, 1893:   It was good to be king.  Or, in this case, it was good to be Daniel Burnham, who chaired the Board of Architects. On this day, a not remotely little plan he conceived three years prior was about to become electrifyingly real.  He and a few of his Prairie Avenue neighbors, Marshall Field, George Pullman and Philip D. Armour, had organized the world’s biggest block party: The Columbian Exposition. Of course, the friends had to pass the hat to get a little startup money. By the time Chicago had prevailed over New York, Washington, D.C. and St. Louis, the Prairie Avenue luminaries and their contemporaries had raised $10 million to host the Exposition in their back yard.

By May 1, the costs had exceeded $28 million.  Burnham’s treasured business partner, John Wellborn Root, had suddenly died early in the planning stages. Famed landscape designer Frederick Law Olmsted transformed some 600 acres of ungainly, swampy grounds in Jackson Park into a fairyland, complete with stately promenades and graceful waterways. A magical Beaux-Arts city of elaborate buildings clad in snow-white stucco slowly rose from the imaginations of Burnham and his team of the world’s most distinguished architects.  Standing in stark contrast to the poorest neighborhoods of Chicago that had not fully recovered from the 1871 fire, the White City, as it came to be known, would captivate the millions who passed through it. By the time construction was complete, the 14 principal structures contained 63 million square feet of floor space.

Aerial View, World's Fair

Aerial view of the 1893 Columbian Exposition

On May 1, Opening Day, President Grover Cleveland arrived to do the honors with Mayor Carter Harrison before more than 100,000 spectators.  He flipped a lever, thus awakening the dynamos that would power the spectacle. Some 120,000 light bulbs began to glow.  The Fair literally burst into a most luminous life.

World's Fair at Night

All aglow: The World’s Fair at night.

During the six months of the Fair’s existence, some 27 million people came to visit. That translates to roughly 25% of the U.S. population at the time. This is an amazing statistic given the relative scarcity of transportation and the nation’s predominantly agrarian culture. But come they did: on the New York Central, the Michigan Central, and the Santa Fe. They arrived on horseback, by coach. Most stayed for a few days, marveled at the exhibits, discovered Juicy Fruit gum, gobbled the new dessert treat, “brownies,” purchased souvenirs and went home.

Some visitors came from far away. Chicago considered itself honored to host dignitaries from all over the globe. One of the most prominent groups affiliated with the Columbian Exposition was the Board of Lady Managers, one of the earliest female organizations officially recognized by the U.S. Congress. Chairing the Board was Bertha Palmer, half of one of Chicago’s first Power Couples. A well-educated lady of the South, she proved to be a brilliant match for department store and hotel magnate Potter Palmer. She was revered in her own town, but her star was just beginning to shine on a worldwide basis.  And so it came to be that she received not just ingratitude but insults from one of her prized guests at the Fair.

Chicago society was clearly flexing its collective muscle when it secured one Maria Eulalia Francisca de Asis Margarita Roberta Isabel Francisca de Paula Cristina Maria de la Piedad, otherwise known as the Infanta Eulalia of Spain, as a visitor.  What better way to commemorate the good judgment of Queen Isabella to send Columbus on a voyage than to have a present-day representative of the Spanish crown show up at your block party?

Infanta_Eulalia_of_Spain

Feeling the joy: The Infanta Eulalia.

Bertha Palmer 2

The “Innkeeper’s Wife.”

The denizens of Prairie Avenue and Chicago’s other elite enclaves went beyond their already lavish entertainment machinations to wow the Spanish royal. However, the Infanta was famously not impressed with the Windy City’s luminaries.  While Chicagoans were accustomed to snubs, they did not take kindly to Eulalia’s catty reference to Mrs. Palmer as a “lowly innkeeper’s wife.”  While the Infanta would write socially insightful books later in life, she was not at her best in 1893.  Bertha Palmer was too graceful at the time to have publicly  commented upon the Infanta’s having married her first cousin, a union that would have inspired present-day critics with whoops of infantile glee.

Mrs. Palmer would exact revenge when on a visit to Paris some years later, she was invited to a reception for the haughty Eulalia.  According to Stephen Longstreet’s wickedly funny book, Chicago, Mrs. Palmer declined to attend, reportedly saying, “I cannot meet this bibulous representative of a degenerate monarchy.”

Speaking of degeneracy, another element of the Fair piqued the ire of Mrs. Palmer even more than the haughty Spaniard: The Streets of Cairo. This most successful exhibit on the Midway featured Javanese women capable of never-before seen abdominal gyrations. In other words, belly dancers made their wiggly debut in Chicago, delighting millions of Fair attendees. Mrs. Palmer was infuriated, but the concession was wildly popular.

Beyond the dreamlike ambience of the White City, even beyond the views from the new Ferris Wheel, was a killer who would thrive in the crowds and prey upon young female visitors. The best way to learn about the dark side of the gleaming Fair is to read Erik Larson’s Devil in the White City.  Rumored to be a future Martin Scorsese film starring Leonardo DiCaprio, its protagonist is, for obvious reasons, Daniel Burnham. Until the publication of Devil, few knew much about the antagonist, H.H. Holmes. A New Hampshire ne’er do well who came to Chicago to pursue a career in dubious medicine, Holmes bought himself a building in Englewood, near the fairgrounds. He dubbed the structure “The World’s Fair Hotel.”  Holmes operated a pharmacy on the ground floor, but the upstairs rooms contained architectural features that would have astounded even Burnham. Holmes configured the rooms to incorporate secret passages, tiny spaces, and a chute that would swoop dead bodies to the basement with its conveniently installed kiln.

The "Devil," H.H. Holmes
The “Devil,” H.H. Holmes
The "World's Fair Hotel"
The “World’s Fair Hotel”

Holmes appeared to be a reasonably good-looking man, so much so that he was engaged to at least two women. He tortured and slaughtered countless more. Thanks to the kiln, it was easy to dispose of them.  In addition to having committed murder, Holmes engaged in insurance fraud. While involved in the latter malfeasance, he was arrested in Philadelphia. Detective Frank Geyer, while investigating Holme’s financial crimes, dug a bit deeper into Holmes’ past. Geyer was horrified to discover that the imprisoned Holmes was also a mass murderer. Some estimates place the number of Holmes’ victims at 200. The odious Holmes was hanged on May 7, 1896 in Philadelphia’s Moyamensing Prison.

By the time the Fair ended on October 31, 1893, Mayor Carter Harrison was assassinated by a would-be seeker of office. A smallpox epidemic swept through Chicago.  And, shortly after the visitors had gone home, the Ferris Wheel and midway disassembled, the last remnants of popcorn swept off the streets, the Fair caught fire.  Many of the main buildings were destroyed.  Only one of the glorious structures still stands: The Palace of Fine Arts, although today it is known as the Museum of Science and Industry.  The only building constructed with every known method of fireproofing, to protect precious works of art, withstood the flames of 1893.  When Chicago played host to the World’s Fair in 1933, the Museum had been reclad in Indiana limestone. This imposing yet beloved structure will serve as long as time permits as a reminder of the long-gone White City.

 

 

 

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They Made No Little Plans: The Influence of Prairie Avenue on the 1893 Columbian Exposition – Part I

12 Monday Jun 2017

Posted by M.K.E. in Uncategorized

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1893 columbian exposition, chicago, Crystal Palace, Daniel Burnham, Daniel H. Burnham, John Wellborn Root, Make no little plans, marshall field, philip d armour, prairie avenue, Prince Albert, Queen Victoria, Victoria & Albert, World's Fair

“Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men’s blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will never die, but long after we are gone be a living thing, asserting itself with ever-growing insistency. Remember that our sons and our grandsons are going to do things that would stagger us. Let your watchword be order and your beacon beauty.“

Daniel_Burnham_c1890

Daniel H. Burnham, circa 1890

This timeless quote is from Daniel Hudson Burnham, the legendary Chicago architect and urban planner.  Burnham is the author of the Plan of Chicago, a masterful 1909 text that, among other things, helped ensure that Chicago’s miles of lakefront were not only beautiful, but functional and accessible to all. Burnham was also the visionary behind an event that would establish Chicago once and for all as a world-class city, commercial juggernaut, and cultural mecca: The 1893 Columbian Exhibition.

john-b-sherman-house-2100-s-prairie-1876-1936

John B Sherman Home, 2100 S. Prairie Avenue

Like many remarkable Chicagoans profiled in this series, Daniel Burnham was a denizen of Prairie Avenue. One of his first architectural commissions, shared with business partner John Wellborn Root, was a grand home at 2100 S. Prairie Avenue. The fledgling firm of Burnham & Root designed the mansion for John B. Sherman, one of the founding members of the Union Stockyards. While the home was under construction, Burnham met and married Sherman’s daughter, Margaret. At the outset of what would be a long and happy union, Burnham came to live in the house he built for his eventual father-in-law.  Sherman became an avid supporter of Burnham & Root, using his many business connections to generate commissions for the growing firm.

During his time on Prairie Avenue, Burnham made many friendships with Chicago’s elite. His ties to the city’s most wealthy and powerful citizens gave him an edge when the city vied for a most prestigious prize: Hosting a World’s Fair.

There has not been a World’s Fair in the United States since 1984. The last Fair, hosted in New Orleans, entered into bankruptcy before its six-month run ended. More than one generation of Americans has never attended, and perhaps never will attend, a World’s Fair. Remnants of 20th century Fairs, such as New York’s Unisphere and Seattle’s Space Needle, are camp icons. It is easy to forget that World’s Fairs were once huge, heavily attended spectacles, showcasing technological innovation and, if the backers were lucky, generating significant profits.

The first World’s Fairs were mainly industrial exhibitions. Between 1798 and 1851, Paris hosted eleven such shows. Other countries began to take notice. Always one to engage in one-upmanship with its rival nation, Great Britain decided to host its first exhibition on a scale that would dwarf anything France had thus far accomplished. Prince Albert, husband of Queen Victoria, and Henry Cole organized the bombastically titled Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations.  The Great Exhibition, now recognized as the first World’s Fair, was housed in a fantastic mega-greenhouse that came to be known as the Crystal Palace. The 1851 London-based event helped to solidify awareness of Britain’s industrial and technological leadership. It was also hugely profitable: Its surplus of what would be more than $22 million in 2017 was used to build several museums, including the Victoria and Albert.  There was even enough leftover money for a trust to fund industrial research grants. The trust is still in existence.

Crystal Palace, London

The London Great Exhibition’s Crystal Palace

The United States did not host a major exposition until 1876, when the Centennial Exposition opened in Philadelphia.  Four years in the making, the event contained some 200 buildings and drew more than 10 million visitors. While it did not achieve a profit for its investors, the Centennial Exposition established the U.S. as a formidable source of manufactured goods. It ultimately enhanced the nation’s viability by helping to spur the growth of exports.

Stereopticon View Memorial Hall Philadelphia

Stereopticon image of Memorial Hall, Centennial Exhibition, 1876.

Following the success of Philadelphia, it was time for another World’s Fair.  This one would commemorate the 400th anniversary of Columbus’ discovery of the New World. Washington, D.C., St. Louis, New York and Chicago initially vied to host the exhibition. It soon became evident in the timeless “pay to play” scheme of things that only New York and Chicago possessed the necessary financial muscle to host an event of such magnitude. Although Chicago was only some 20 years beyond the 1871 fire that devastated the city, its resurrection was rapid and spectacular. It was, defiant of any odds, a formidable contender. The eyes of the nation focused upon the two great cities: New York, America’s locus of power, longtime financial center, versus aggressive, new-monied Chicago. The U.S. Congress would be the final decision-maker of the Exposition’s venue.

In New York’s corner stood deep-pocketed giants such as Cornelius Vanderbilt, J.P. Morgan and William W. Astor. In Chicago, however, a few Prairie Avenue neighbors were not about to back down: In an early display of refusal to concede to Second City status,  Philip D. Armour and Marshall Field used their considerable wealth to put Chicago forward. Other major players included Gustavus Swift, Cyrus McCormick and Charles T. Yerkes. Chicagoans of every income level pledged whatever they could to ensure their town would be the next location of a World’s Fair.  New York was still the predicted host until a last-minute funding surge of several million dollars orchestrated by Chicago financier Lyman Gage turned the tables. Congress decided: Chicago would host the 1893 Columbian Exhibition.  And Daniel Burnham would have some very big plans to make.

To be continued.

 

How Chicago Culture Bloomed on the Prairie (Avenue)

18 Wednesday Jan 2017

Posted by M.K.E. in Uncategorized

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1893 columbian exposition, 1893 world's fair, art institute, chicago, chicago fire, chicago symphony orchestra, cso, field museum, george pullman, glessner, marshall field, philip d armour, prairie avenue, shedd aquarium, theodore thomas

To longtime residents and newcomers alike, Chicago’s cultural institutions seem to have been fixed stars in the city’s firmament. It is almost impossible to imagine a time when Chicagoans and visitors could not delight in the Art Institute, Symphony Orchestra, Lyric Opera, and countless other venues. The city’s quest for artistic viability started early on:  as soon as the mid-1800s, the city began to establish itself as the Midwest’s mecca of wealth, culture and philanthropic opportunities. The city’s progress in these areas grew exponentially after the Chicago Fire of 1871, when the need for lumber, steel, foodstuffs and department store goods further enriched already prosperous families. Many of these families, such as the Potters, Glessners, Armours, Hamills and Fields, had the prescience to help build prestigious cultural institutions that thrive to this day.

By the 1880s, an inordinately large percentage of Chicago’s monied families chose Prairie Avenue as the place to build their palaces.  Although the phrase “Keeping up with the Jones” refers to the Jones family of New York City that produced novelist Edith Wharton, there were plenty of Jones counterparts residing in the not-so-little houses on the Prairie.

While their spouses were reigning over their factories, stockyards and stores, the ladies of Prairie Avenue sought to create a vibrant, elegant social environment to compete with, if not rival, those of New York, Philadelphia and Boston. The earliest social functions were not entire worthy of the storied gatherings back East.  In Emmett Dedmon’s fascinating book, Chicago, reference is made to one Charles Fenno Hoffman, who described a typical social event: “At these Chicago cotillions, you might see a veteran officer in full uniform balancing a tradesman’s daughter still in her short frock and trousers, while there the golden aiguillette of a handsome surgeon flapped in unison with the glass beads upon a scrawny neck of fifty … the high placed buttons of a linsey woolsey coat would be dos a dos to the elegantly turned shoulders of a delicate southern girl.”  However, what the city may have lacked in pedigree, it more than compensated in money and visionary benefactors.

As Chicago’s elite sought to force showy hothouse flowers from its frontier town roots, they began to cultivate the rudiments of culture on the shores of Lake Michigan. Some of the city’s wealthiest inhabitants had music and art imbued in them from educations in the East; others were ardent students of the city’s early arbiters of taste. One way or another, it became incumbent upon Chicago’s most successful citizens to transform what was once a backwater into a showcase of the arts.

Then, as now, a successful opera company was one of the bellwethers of a young metropolis. Chicago’s first opera house opened in 1865, but was destroyed in the Chicago Fire. Its successor, Louis Sullivan’s extraordinary Auditorium, opened in 1889.  Theodore Thomas founded the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (CSO) in 1891.  Concurrent with the 1893 Columbian Exposition, an event that signified that Chicago had truly arrived as a world-class city, the Art Institute of Chicago moved into its venerable headquarters on Michigan Avenue at Adams Street.  The Boston architectural firm of Shepley, Rutan and Coolidge provided a Renaissance design so appropriate for Chicago’s rebirth after its devastation by fire only 20 years prior.

art-institute-of-chicago-1892

The Art Institute of Chicago rises, ca.1893.

Not surprisingly, the families of Prairie Avenue played significant roles in Chicago’s social and cultural ascendancy. Upon the formation of the CSO, John and Frances Glessner pledged ardent support behind the orchestra and its founder, Theodore Thomas. Mr. Glessner served as one of the original 50 guarantors of the CSO, providing the fledgling organization with $1,000.00 per year against the host of losses it initially incurred. He was instrumental, so to speak, in the construction of the orchestra’s home on Michigan Avenue. Mr. Thomas was a frequent guest at the Glessners’ homes, not only on Prairie Avenue, but in the families’ summer residences in New Hampshire.  The families’ friendship was so strong that upon Mr. Thomas’ death in 1904, Mrs. Thomas presented the Glessners with her husband’s baton.  The precious artifact is on display at the Glessner House Museum.

cso-circa-1899

Theodore Thomas conducts the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, ca. 1899.

George Armour was one of the initial patrons of the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts, the predecessor to the Art Institute of Chicago. Countless Prairie Avenue luminaries lended their business acumen and political connections to launch the 1893 Columbian Exposition, which brought an estimated 26 million visitors to Chicago.  Among the Exposition’s major underwriters were Marshall Field, Philp D. Armour and Gustavus Swift.

The Field Museum, another initial outgrowth of the Columbian Exposition, would not have grown into a world-renowned educational institution without the support of its namesake, Marshall Field, or the generosity of his Prairie Avenue friend and neighbor, George Pullman.

field-museum

Countless visitors wait in line to visit the new Field Museum.

One of Marshall Field’s most brilliant executives, John G. Shedd, visited fascinating aquariums in his travels through major European cities. He concluded that Chicago should have not only its own institution to house aquatic animals, but one that rivaled all others throughout the world.  He donated at least $2 million toward his masterpiece.  Although Mr. Shedd died before his aquarium was completed, the Shedd Aquarium stands as a beloved, ever-evolving tribute to this Chicagoan’s generosity.

shedd-aquarium-1920s

A bevy of 1920s cuties enjoyed the Shedd.

Even entities as far-flung as the Archaeological Institute of America thrived under the aegis of Prairie Avenue residents.  An 1888 list of its Society members reads like a Who’s Who of Chicago’s upper echelon, including Prairie Avenue residents Armour, Bartlett, Buckingham, Ellis, Field, Frank, Glessner, Hamill, Harvey, Hutchinson and countless more.

As evidenced in previous installments in this series, the contributions of one group of citizens living for a time on one Chicago street cannot be overestimated.

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