Welcome to this month's reading group selection. David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908. At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades. Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society. I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran. Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, noting the gro
I think it was 1893 -- which is odd given the 1492 commemoration. But that was where Turner gave his paper on the end of the American frontier.
ReplyDeleteDevil in the White City focuses on the architect (and the devil) -- you might like it since there's lots about the architecture firm and what they were trying to accomplish. I didn't get much past that, but I'm also sort of overwhelmed with other stuff. Dramatic story to be sure.
It started October, 1892, and extended into 1893.
ReplyDeleteDaniel Burnham is an interesting figure, assuming that is who Larson is referring to. He is better known as an urban planner than an architect. He completed the design of Washington, DC, which L'Enfant had started.
ReplyDeleteIt was his partner, John Root, who was made head of the World's Fair but died in 1891, and Burnham assumed the leadership, much to the chagrin of Louis Sullivan, who was good friends with Root in pioneering a modern Chicago architectural style. Burnham was always more drawn to neo-classical planning and architecture, and when he took the lead he invited mostly New York architects, including McKim, Mead and White, to design the major buildings. Sullivan was given the transportation building.
Sullivan's transportation building,
ReplyDeletehttp://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/cas/fnart/fa267/1893/1893trn1.jpg
http://www.erbzine.com/mag12/carriah3.jpg
I don't think he put much heart into it, although close-ups reveal his wonderful sense of ornamentation.
I did a lot of research on the 1876 Centennial in Philadelphia -- it's amazing how they built these virtual state-of-the-art cities and then tore them down after only a few months. And in the midst of economic downturns and depressions.
ReplyDeleteNice article on the Ferris wheel:
http://www.hydeparkhistory.org/newsletter.html
Note that the fair opened May 1, 1893, and closed at the end of October.
Dates seem to vary, but this timeline shows that the fair was dedicated on October 2, 1892,
ReplyDeletehttp://homicide.northwestern.edu/context/timeline/1892/234/
hence the title and the coin,
http://www.coinweek.com/news/specialty-categories/commemoratives/1892-1893-columbian-exposition-half-dollar/
but as you note it didn't officially open until May, 1893.
I much prefer your date which must be for ground breaking because the 400 year commemoration is obvious -- something that I had totally missed in spite of the title. They were always calling them something like Columbian or Pan American or Pacific or whatever.
ReplyDeleteI had to laugh because moving my can of Irish Steel Oats this a.m. I noticed it won an award at the 1893 Columbian World's Fair for its uniformity of granulation. Better than being selected by the queen!
http://www.worldmarket.com/product/index.jsp?productId=11554714
(The can at Amazon says it also won an award in 1876 -- but having looked at the awards books for that one, they awarded everyone and everything.)
There's a whole world of scholarship around the fairs. I find them interesting because of their promotion of commerce and progress with a layer of science thrown in. The Smithsonian pretty much came into being as a museum after the 1876 Centennial -- they went around and asked everyone (states and countries) to donate their natural history specimens rather than ship them home. Many if not most did. It resulted in the need for a totally new museum building (now the Arts and Culture building).
I read Devil in the White City last month.
ReplyDeletePictures on the website you posted are great. It looks larger than I'd imagined from the book.