Site of the original Ferris Wheel
Midway Plaisance (Jackson Park)
The original Ferris Wheel debuted at the World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893. The wheel was built by Pittsburgh bridge builder George Ferris. It was 294 feet tall and lit by 2,500 Edison incandescent bulbs. It took twenty minutes to complete two revolutions, the second being nonstop.
The Columbian Exposition commemorated the 400th anniversary of Columbus’s arrival in the New World. The sprawling Exposition consumed a 686-acre site in Jackson Park. One part was the White City, a collection of buildings with neoclassical facades showcasing contemporary art and technology, including many progressive or futuristic exhibits. The other part was The Midway Plaisance, a mile-long strip of carnival rides and cultural/ethnological displays that led up to White City. The Midway once served as the southern border of the University of Chicago, which was being built as the fair was ending (thus, UC’s football team became the original “Monsters of the Midway,” before the Chicago Bears). Between May and October 1893, around 20 million people visited the fair.
The Columbian Exposition features prominently in Erik Larson’s Devil in the White City. Larson’s book is a nonfiction story with duel plot lines involving fair architect Daniel Burnham and serial killer H.H. Holmes; it takes literary license to employ many novelist elements, such as the revelation of inner thoughts and point of view. Larson’s book details the implementation of the Ferris Wheel and its impact on the fair. There is a scene in which six of the 36 cars test successfully. It dramatizes the ceremonial opening of the Ferris Wheel on June 21, 1893, including the debut riders that include Ferris, his wife, and Mayor Carter Harrison, and then its opening to the general public. Throughout all this are persistent rumors that the Ferris Wheel is unsafe. Harrison would be assassinated two days before the fair ended, prompting the city to cancel closing ceremonies in favor of a public memorial.
The wheel’s total capacity was 2,160 people--36 gondolas that held as many as 60 people each. At a cost of fifty cents, approximately 1.4 million fair goers took the ride. The majestic views of Lake Michigan and the rest of Chicago, as well as the spectacle of this impossibly large metal ride, became easy fodder for fiction, a dynamic that continues today. The Columbian Exposition spurred many, many historical novels, almost all of which, to some degree or another, used the Ferris Wheel as part of the backdrop. There were dozens of books, fiction and nonfiction, published within two years of the fair’s completion. Many of these were written for a young audience. L. Frank Baum, new to Chicago at the time, found inspiration for the Land of Oz from his visits to the fair. The Exposition, with the Ferris Wheel and Midway Plaisance serving as rich symbols of the modern world, serves as backdrop to Theodore Dreiser's 1900 novel Sister Carrie. Every year, new titles get released; there are literally hundreds of Columbian Exposition books in what amounts to a sub-genre of American literature. There are comic books, interactive fiction, video games, juvenile stories, nonfiction, feature films and documentaries, graphic novels, song, mysteries, romances, and on and on.
The buildings of the White City were designed to be temporary, made out of steel frames covered in plaster, cement, and jute fiber called “staff.” What is now the Museum of Science and Industry was the only permanent building, originally built to house the Palace of Fine Arts. The Field Museum was founded as a memorial to the Columbian Exposition, named after Marshall Field because of his large contribution.
The Art Institute of Chicago was built for the Fair and used for assemblies; it was converted to housing for the Art Institute’s collection. In 1893, the Japanese Government built the Ho-o-den [Phoenix Temple] on Jackson Park’s Wooden Island as its Columbian Exposition pavilion. Japan gifted it to Chicago after the conclusion of the fair, and in the 1930s the Chicago Park District restored the pavilion and expanded the once-small Japanese Garden, where in spring (usually late April) the cherry trees blossom.
After the 1893 fair closed, homeless and unemployed people took refuge in the empty buildings, for years, according to some reports. A fire—possibly caused by the vagrants—later destroyed many of the buildings.
