How Did The 1893 World's Fair Shape America Today

The 1893 World’s Fair

Imagine what it would be like if America wasn’t what it is today. What if there was no technology, no security and people could do whatever they wanted to. That might sound like a lot of fun but in reality, it would be chaos. With the help of the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago, the world is not like that. How did the 1893 World’s Fair affect and shape America today? It shaped America today by listening to the message of the fair and also changing security. In addition, the fair helped shape American culture, commerce, and technology.

The Chicago World’s Fair (Columbian Exposition) was meant to celebrate the four-hundredth anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s voyage to the new world. This also brought America Columbus Day which we still celebrate today. The fair started May 1st, 1893, which is a year after they originally planned to have the fair start. It went on for six months and closed on October 30th, 1893. It was held in Jackson Park and the Midway Plaisance and occupied about six hundred and thirty acres. The

cost to make the fair happen was about twenty-eight million dollars. The fair opened only twenty-two years after the Chicago fire and only twenty-eight years after the American Civil War. People were not just there to walk around and look at things, but they were also there to enjoy the cultural part of it with music, games, and food.
The Fair drew in about twenty-seven million people, which is about twenty-five percent of the United States population at the time. Fourteen million of those people were from outside of Chicago. Over three hundred people visited a week. Adults were fifty cents to get in, kids six and up were twenty-five cents, and kids six and under were free. Nowadays, paying with fifty cents to get in would be nothing, but back then it was more than it is now. Once the fair ended there was approximately twenty-one million paid admissions and six million free.
Some of the inventions that people at the fair put on display were Phosphorescent lamps, the Ferris Wheel, the Zipper, Congress of Mathematics, and Hershey's Chocolate. There were also a lot of buildings at the fair. Daniel Burnham designed the fair's main buildings. Those buildings were called the White City. The buildings of the White City only stood for six months. There were over forty thousand skilled laborers and workers that were employed in the construction of the fair. To help build, the people used about seventy-five million board feet of lumber, eighteen thousand tons of iron and steel, and one hundred and twenty thousand incandescent lights.
If the 1893 World’s Fair did not happen then the world would not be how it is today, but it did happen and it did indeed help America. “The fair influenced many things beyond the confines of the fair which have shaped the very landscape of modern America. The legacy was wide ranging from culture to the nation's structure.” This quote from xroads.virginia.edu/ said exactly, that the fair has shaped the very landscape of America. I think that the legacy is not as persuasive as it was when the fair happened but it is still there and we still apply it to everyday life.
One of the ways that the fair impacted America today was through the message of the fair. Xroads.virginia.edu/ states, “The dreams of unity, the assertion of culture and education, and most importantly the valorization of American technology(especially electricity) and commerce.” In other words, the dreams of unity, value, culture and education and most importantly technology and commerce(buying and selling).
Another one of the reasons they had the fair was for business things like making sure people know what the product is and make sure that it sells. “The Columbian Exposition, in its official, unofficial, and received form, was an expression of the convergence of forces which eventually shaped modern America.” Harvard President Charles Eliot Norton remarked. The fair also gave us a bunch of lasting effects on American society. If the 1893 World’s Fair did not happen then we would probably not have technology, education, culture, businesses, and the ability to have power and these things would not keep building. So the next generation would not have power over any of these things.
What also helped shape America was the security at the fair. The security back then probably didn’t matter as much as it did nowadays because there was nine hundred and four arrests were made, there were ten attempts to pass counterfeit coins, four hundred and eight people were able to get over the fence into the grounds, four hundred and thirty-eight convictions, one escape, thirty reports on lost children, five hundred and thirty-nine reports of suspicious people, and five reports of employees killed. Now that security does matter, we are glad that we had the fair to learn off of.
The exposition was also an influence leading to the rise of the City Beautiful Movement. Geography.about.com states that “The City Beautiful Movement was a reform philosophy of North American architecture and urban planning that flourished during the 1890s and 1900s with the intent of introducing beautification and monumental grandeur in cities.” Some of the results from the movement were, more grand buildings, larger park systems, more fountains built, and broad boulevards and parkways. Some of the City Beautiful Movement works were the city of Chicago, Columbia University Campus, and Mallin Washington D.C.
The fair that came after the Chicago Fair was The Philadelphia Sesquicentennial International Exposition.

Similar to the Chicago World’s Fair, it also had a big impact on America. It opened May thirty-first and closed November thirtieth. It was hosted in South Philadelphia between the Naval Yard and Packer Avenue, and between Tenth and Twenty-Third Streets. Unfortunately for early fairgoers, the fair was open, but it was not quite finished. Philadelphiaencyclopedia.org stated that “Several buildings remained under construction until late July, nearly two months into a six-month run.”

Philadelphiaencyclopedia.org states that “There were five large “palaces,” or exhibition halls that provided acres of indoor exhibition space, and pavilions represented thirty-one states, four territories, and nine foreign nations.” They stated that “Several buildings remained under construction until late July, nearly two months into a six-month

run.”
The Philadelphia Sesquicentennial International Exposition was the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. “The Declaration of Independence set forth a formal assessment of grievances against the British government and declared that, because their rights had been violated repeatedly, the 13 North American colonies were formally declaring their independence from British rule. It had the additional benefit of bringing all the colonies together as a unified group and provided justification for intervention by future allies, such as France.” Stated in reference.com.
The Philadelphia Sesquicentennial International Exposition was a big fair, like the Chicago fair, but the Chicago world fair was still more important. The Chicago World’s Fair came before the Philadelphia Fair and the Chicago world’s fair had more inventions. Even though the fair started a year late it was still finished when it opened. Going back to the Declaration of Independence and Christopher Columbus, the Declaration is still more important but it wouldn’t be here if Christopher Columbus did not find America. The Chicago World’s Fair was one of the greatest fairs in history if it didn’t happen the world would not be the same today. The world would not be like it is today because the Chicago world’s fair was the fair that started everything that is in our lives today.
Two days before the fair ended the mayor was shot and killed, because of this, they closed the ending ceremonies in honor of the mayor. All that was left standing at the end of the fair was the Ferris wheel,The Palace of Fine Arts,and The World’s Congress Auxiliary Building. All the other buildings either collapsed or were taken down after the fair. The Palace of Fine Arts has been renovated and now serves as the Science and Industry Museum which most of us have seen today. The Chicago World’s Fair made a big impact on America in a good way and that is that is the reason we have everything we have today.