Annotated Bibliography: World’s Columbian Exposition

I’m working on a project for a rare books class I took two weeks ago. It’s an annotated bibliography of books on Chicago. I discovered, and promptly bought on Amazon,

Dybwad, G.L., and Bliss, Joy V. Annotated Bibliography: World’s Columbian Exposition, Chicago 1893. Albuquerque, NM, 1992.

Organized by type of item, this bibliography includes a brief history of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition (WCE), a fold out map of the WCE and its organization chart. This source includes chapters on fiction, poetry and children’s books, exposition publications, federal publications, guides, periodicals, music, salesmen’s samples, recent books and unpublished unique works. The introduction is written by Dybwad and explains why he started this project.

The entries in this source date from before the fair to 1991.

The bibliographers designed the format and organized the source with a view to ease of use. Abbreviations and citations are clearly explained and the indexes cross-reference items so if users don’t know the author’s name or the title of an item, they can still find it relatively easily. Each entry is concise and provides a brief description of each item. When available, the bibliographers list price information, however, following the Introduction, there’s a note on price stating principles in pricing and reasons for variance. (No doubt since 1992 these prices have changed.)

For books, there is minimal collation* information. This book is a comprehensive source, which would aid researchers and collectors.

(*Collation information describes the paper, binding, etc.)

 

What a Glorious Event!

Transportation Building

Liberal Arts Building

Source: Field Museum’s Flickr page

 

The Devil in the White City

I know this book came out years ago and it’s been patiently sitting on the shelves back home for me to read it. At last, I have.

Talk about enthralling. Erik Larson‘s chronicles Daniel Burnham‘s prodigious efforts to make the 1893 World’s Fair spectacular while contrasting the creation of a dream city with a serial killer, Dr. H.H. Holmes‘ building a sinister white castle, a site of nightmares, that would help Holmes lure in his victims, pretty, young women, alone in the city.

The book reads like a novel weaving in facts and research perfectly. In fact, I so enjoyed Larson’s research that it spurred me to look up Holmes on Lexis and the World’s Fair on JSTR. I felt Burnham’s frustrations as the deadline for opening the fair neared and so problems cropped up: impatient businessmen wanted to tighten the workers threatened to strike, East Coast architects resisted contributing, dates and deadlines got confused, the economy tanked, fatal accidents halted work. New Yorker reminded Chicago that the country’s reputation was on the line. This fair had to outdo any and all prior fairs. This story alone would have kept me interested. Larson provides the bonus of a true crime story which dramatically unwinds.

Reading The Devil in The White City made me appreciate what a unique era this was and how our era will never have an event that’s so magical and inspiring. Visitors had seen nothing like it. The event transformed people giving a generation a whole new view of what a city could be, how people needn’t settle for the black, bleak putrid cities they’d known. A city could inspire and enrich. I’d definitely read more of Larson’s work.

The Burning of the White City. (Electricity Building on left, Mines and Mining Building on right.) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A movie is in development, but it could be too gory for my tastes.

A few good quotations:

‘Ellsworth insisted that what Chicago had in mind was something far grander than even the Paris exposition. He described for Olmsted a vision of a dream city designed by America’s greatest architects and covering an expanse at least one-third larger than the Paris fair.'(49)

‘He was the smoothest man I ever saw.”said C.E.Davis, whom Holmes had hired to manage the drugstore’s jewelry counter. Creditors, Davis said, would “come here raging and calling him all the names imaginable, and he would smile and talk to them and set up the cigars and drinks and send them away seemingly his friends for life. I never saw him angry. You couldn’t have trouble with him if you tired.'(72)

‘He argued that Chicago’s fair, unlike any other before it, would be primarily a monument to architecture. It would awaken the nation to the power of architecture to conjure beauty from stone and steel.'(80)

In a great blur of snow and silvery glass the building’s roof—that marvel of late nineteenth-century hubris, enclosing the greatest volume of unobstructed space in history—collapsed to the floor below” [p. 196–97

The young poet Edgar Lee Masters called the Court of Honor “an inexhaustible dream of beauty” [p. 252]; Dora Root wrote “I think I should never willingly cease drifting in that dreamland” [p. 253]; Theodore Dreiser said he had been swept “into a dream from which I did not recover for months” [p. 306]; and columnist Teresa Dean found it “cruel . . . to let us dream and drift through heaven for six months, and then to take it out of our lives” [p. 335]

Related articles

• Chicago’s Historic Reliance Building: Evokes the Tale of Legendary Architects Burnham and Atwood in the White City (vinoconvistablog.me)
• Citizen Reader on Historical True Crime readers
• LAW ‘N HISTORY: Dr. Slice, Dice and Saute (enterprisenews.com)
• What I’m Reading – In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson (nerdyapple.com)
• History of the World’s Fair (jottingswithjasmine.wordpress.com)
• Review on Literary Omnivore
• Book Club Discussion Questions on Devil in the White City

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What Are You Reading?

Welcome to It’s Monday!  What Are You Reading?  This is a great way to plan out your reading week and see what others are currently reading as well… you never know where that next “must read” book will come from!

I love being a part of this and I hope you do too!  As part of this weekly meme I love to encourage you all to go and visit the others participating in this meme.  I offer a weekly contest for those who visit 10 or more of the Monday Meme participants and leave a comment telling me how many you visited.  **You do not have to have a blog to participate! You receive one entry for every 10 comments, just come back here and tell me how many in the comment area.

I’m reading The Devil in the White City, nonfiction account of Daniel Burnham‘s work creating the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893 and H. H. Holmes fiendish serial murders and Moby Dick. “Call me Ishmael.” Diving into this classic due to the promptings of my book club. Both are wonderful so far.